Albums:

A Long Hot Summer (2004)

Disposable Arts (2001)

Sittin’ On Chrome (1995)

Slaughtahouse (1993)

Take A Look Around (1990)

Website: Masta Ace

Halftime: Heard you are a straight up football fan, since you’re from NY what do you think of your boy Jeremy Shockey?

Masta Ace: Good player. I’m an Eagles fan so it’s hard for me to give that guy any type of real props, but I can’t deny that he’s a good player. He’s a bruiser. A few of my friends went to Giants training camp this year and they told me he is definitely the real deal.

How did you become an Eagles fan living in Brooklyn?

Ace: You know what it was when I was a young kid my uncle used to torment me, he was a Giants fan and more so a Dallas Cowboys fan so I would always be rooting against the Cowboys. They used to always win in the 70s, so every time they won he would always tease me. Then one day Dallas had to go to Philly for an NFC championship game in 1980, the year the Eagles went to the Super Bowl, and from that point forward I found somebody who could smack the Cowboys up and I stayed with them from the 1980s till now.

Speaking of the Cowboys what do you think about Emmit Smith leaving them after being there so long and setting records?

Ace: I hate to see veterans have to move on to other things, but that’s the nature of this game. Back in the days guys would play with a team for their entire career and then retire and it was a beautiful thing. He’s one of those guys who still feel like he got a little bit of gas in the tank and I guess he is going after some other records and felt he had some more worth on the field and they just wanted to get younger. They weren’t going to pay him what he wanted to get paid.

What you think of Ray Lewis?

Ace: He’s the best in the game. When he chased down Tikki Barber from behind and made that play I said yo this guy is ridiculous. If you know football you know how tough a play that is to make with a guy that size chasing down someone with that type of speed and making the play from where he came from, in the middle [of the field], knifing through a bunch of blockers and getting him by the ankles.

Do you play in any leagues like flag football or something on the side?

Ace: I did. We had a team for a bunch of years from like ’93 -’99 we played flag fall, winter, and spring, but after ’99 the team disbanded after a couple rough seasons and I started coaching high school football in my spare time last year. That’s kinda where I get my football fix now. I still need to be involved with it and if I wasn’t playing flag I was missing it. My brother-in-law went into the 9th grade last year and I got him into this particular school where some guys I knew were coaching. I was around the program and they were like well you here so you might as well help us coach, so I just stumbled into it. This will be my second year and they are moving me to offensive coordinator and the whole nine yards so it will be interesting.

You got a new career in the making.

Ace: Nah, it’s just for the love. In high school they don’t pay you, I just love to be out there.

Let’s get into some hiphop shit now. What are your thoughts on the scene today and how do you think it has progressed over the years?

Ace: There is some good stuff out there and there is some terrible stuff. I guess that’s always been the case in hiphop. It’s probably a little more garbage that gets a lot of money behind it than it used to be. Back in the days you had your one or two acts that you knew was trash [that] still sold records to hiphop audiences, but now it’s like you start to feel that anything a label throws some money behind can win [even though] people who know real music will know that’s not a strong act or a strong artist. Musically things have changed, I don’t know if progressed is the right word, it’s morphed into something different. Cats don’t really sample as much anymore. There are a lot of tracks and beats that are played live. It’s a different sound musically and out of all of that some is good and some of it is garbage.

What do you think about the South really playing a big role in hiphop right now?

Ace: Down south is murdering things right now. They doing it in a big way. There are so many different groups from the south with records all over the radio. I never thought I’d hear those records on New York radio. There was a point and time where New York didn’t follow suit with anybody else in the country like we don’t care what everyone else is playing, but that has changed. They are damn near followers now. It’s the south’s time now [and] there ain’t nothing wrong with that. Anything to change the direction it was at is cool to me and the cool thing is some of them are spitting some decent flows because for a long time the perception was they beats is cool, but I’m not trying to hear there rhymes.

As a veteran in the game do you think hiphop pioneers get the respect that they deserve and if not what do you think contributes to that lack of respect and the lack of knowledge of hiphop history?

Ace: I think hiphop fans are very fickle and that’s been the case since the beginning of time. Hiphop fans are quick to turn on you. Your first musical mistake and the whole community is looking to the next cat and hiphop has always been about the next cat. I feel like it’s still that way. Unfortunately the fans are quick to look for the next cat and do away with past heroes. The other thing you have to remember is that every five years there is a new generation growing up with their artists like the Fabolouses or the 50 Cents and they might not even know much about Mobb Deep or something like that and that was only like five to eight years ago. I’ll give you a perfect example. My brother-in-law is about to go into the 10th grade and he was doing a social studies report dealing with racial injustice and he wanted me to help him with examples. I said what about the Rodney King situation and he was like who’s that and I was like Rodney King and he said you mean the guy with the big hair who manages those boxers? Then it dawned on me and I was like when were you born and he said ’88. He was like three years old when all of that went down so he doesn’t remember any of it. His point of reference is when he turned about seven or eight and that’s music and otherwise, so for him everything pre ’93 might be a little hazy. Plus those fans who were the Public Enemy fans all those years back then maybe they’ve moved on or their musical tastes have changed. I don’t know where they all went, but they don’t turn out for the shows like they should.

That’s true a lot of people blame the younger fans for lack of knowledge, but a lot of the older fans turn their backs on the music altogether.

Ace: I can’t be mad at an 18 year old kid who doesn’t know who Masta Ace is. Why would I be insulted by that? When I dropped my first album he was probably two.

Speaking of your first album how did the whole idea for “Me and The Biz” come up. Was that really Biz rapping or was that you mocking his voice?

Ace: What happened was the song was supposed to be a duet with me and Biz. It was a beat that Marley had that he was gonna use for Biz, but him and Biz was on the outs and that particular time so I picked the track. At that time Biz didn’t really write his rhymes, Kane wrote all of Biz’ hit records, so I knew it would be up to me to write the rhymes which I was cool with. I was really excited about it because I felt like I could really write in his style. I wrote my part and his part and then I vocaled my part and then did his part on another track and tried to do my best imitation of him so that when I gave him the tape he would be able to learn his part and differentiate it from my part. So that’s how the whole mocking thing came about. When it was done Marley was trying to gas me like yo you should leave it like that, it would be ill because you kinda sound like him and people would think its him but it’s not. I was young, I’m like yo Marley if you say that’s hot then let’s run with it. So that’ how it really came about, it was me doing his part but it was meant for him to come back later and do those rhymes.

Looking back on your Juice Crew days what’s the craziest story you can remember?

Ace: It was pretty uneventful. I was kinda new to the whole fold because a bunch of them got to know each other and had been doing shows together. By the time I got down with it Kane and Biz was mad cool, Craig, everybody was cool and I was the new guy, so it was me trying to warm up to them and get to know them. The first time I met Kane was at the photo shoot for the Marley Marl in Control album back where we were all by the plane. That was the first day I met him and Biz, so you gotta look at it like we were taking a photo being presented as Juice Crew, but there were guys there I hadn’t even met yet because I was that new to it. I was trying to think if there was any outrageous story, there was a lot of weird things that happened on the trip we took up to upstate NY to shoot the Symphony video, but certain things that happened on that trip are probably not some things I should mention. There was some actual drama that went down and I don’t want to air anybody’s dirty laundry.

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Posted by Halftime on Tuesday, November 11th, 2003 and is filed under HIP HOP ICON SERIES.