“Be who you are. Be true to who you are.” — Masta Ace
Masta Ace — born Duval Clear in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York — is a certified hip-hop legend. With nearly thirty years as a contributor to hip-hop, Ace has perpetually remained one of the single-least appreciated lyricists the art form has ever seen.
Since his opening verse on “The Symphony” by the Queensbridge-based collective Juice Crew in 1988 — the summer after he graduated from the University of Rhode Island — Ace has consistently created highly cerebral, densely creative conceptual albums as a solo MC, half of a duo or as a member of a crew.
In July 1990, Ace released Take A Look Around, his solo debut on Cold Chillin’ Records under the moniker “Master Ace”. Entirely produced by Marlon “Marley Marl” Williams save for two cuts produced by Calvin “Mister Cee” LeBrun, the record became a classic staple in hip-hop history.
In May 1993, Ace debuted his Masta Ace Incorporated collective with SlaughtaHouse, credited with subjugating the growing tension between East and West Coast artists, styles and sounds.
In May 1995, Ace expanded his blended geographic conquest with Sittin’ On Chrome, the second and final album from his Masta Ace Incorporated crew. Largely produced by Ace under the pseudonym Ase One, Sittin’ On Chrome was his only full-length contribution to hip-hop until 2001.
In October 2001, Ace returned to hip-hop in a major way with the release of Disposable Arts: his full-length concept album. Unknown at the time, Ace was inspired to create Disposable Arts after being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis two years prior.
In August 2004, Ace released A Long Hot Summer: the equally acclaimed conceptual follow-up to Disposable Arts. The album provided an early production opportunity to Patrick “9th Wonder” Douthit on the track “Good Ol’ Love”:
“Masta Ace was listening. At my brokest times, he was listening. A lot of people like to credit Jay Z for putting me on to everybody. But they don’t really factor in the Masta Ace component and they should, because he was the one. You’re not really proven until you work with somebody outside of your team. Ace was the one that said, ‘I like this kid.’ ” — 9th Wonder
In March 2008, Ace returned to hip-hop with his new collective eMC. The quartet — consisting of Ace, Scott ‘Stricklin’, Rashaan “Punchline” Truell and Vinson “Wordsworth” Johnson — released their concept album The Show with production from Matthijs “Nicolay” Rook and Lamont “Ayatollah” Dorrell.
“I went five albums deep / while half the world would sleep / once wrote a speech / about the system in my Jeep / from 1988 / to 2000 and change / it’s incredible I’m still doing my thing / it’s a blessing”
In October 2009, Ace joined Boston, Massachusetts legend and fellow under-appreciated lyricist Edward “EdO G” Anderson to release Arts & Entertainment on M3 Records — owned and operated by Ace himself. The album featured legendary hip-hop veterans William “Large Professor” Mitchell, Lawrence “KRS-One” Parker, Kelvin “Posdnuos” Mercer from De La Soul and Dupré “DOITALL” Kelly from Lords of the Underground.
In July 2012, Ace released MA_Doom: Son of Yvonne, dually distributed by M3 Records and Fat Beats Records. The project consisted entirely of previously-released production from Daniel “MF DOOM” Dumile, who was featured with Antonio “Big Daddy Kane” Hardy on the track “Think I Am”.
“Ace is my man. We both came up at the same time. I’ve been a fan of Ace since back in the day, so it was an honor for him to reach out.” — MF DOOM
In May 2014, the eMC collective returned with The Turning Point EP and once again featured music from up-and-coming producers — this time Kendall “14KT” Tucker.
In May 2015, eMC released The Tonite Show, their second full-length album and featured hip-hop legends Louis “B-Real” Freese, Derrick “Sadat X” Murphy and Joseph “Diamond D” Kirkland.
While preparing several new creative endeavors — including his newest solo album The Falling Season — Masta Ace took the time to discuss perseverance, love, the importance of education and the value of truth.
MASTA ACE
- Born in Brooklyn, New York
- Forty-nine years old
- Bachelor of Science — University of Rhode Island
- #48: “The 50 Greatest Rappers of All Time” — Stop The Breaks
- #26: “Best Rappers of All Time” — Ask Men
- #22: “50 Greatest MCs of Our Time (1987–2007)” — About
- #2: “10 Most Underrated and Underappreciated Rappers” — About
- #1: “The ten most underrated rappers of all time” — Westword
- #1: “The 10 Most Underrated Rappers of All-Time” — Passion of the Weiss
“Once you hear the capital ‘A’ rap / it’ll stay / with you for awhile / it won’t go away”
ON BEGINNING
I didn’t really pursue rapping — it was just something that we did in the neighborhood. I did it in high school; I was pretty good at it based on the people that were around me. When I won the contest in USA — that’s how this all really got started; I won this rap contest. It was Christmas break from college: junior year going into my senior year. I went out and entered this rap contest — I wound up winning the contest, and first prize was six hours of studio time with Marley Marl.
The following year when I graduated from college is when I actually stepped into the studio for the first time with Marley. Now if we just go back in time: let’s say I came in fifth place and I didn’t win. Or maybe I didn’t even place — maybe I got booted the first day. Do I pursue a rap career? Probably not.
I was a marketing major — I wanted to go into advertisement and write TV commercials and print ads and cool stuff like that. I wanted to be the guy writing Budweiser commercials and make people laugh. That’s where I was headed.
So had I not entered that contest and come out victorious, you may not have ever heard of a Masta Ace.
ON IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION
It was made clear to me when I was very young — four, five years old — that my grades were important; doing well in school was important. That was the culture in my household.
But the culture in my neighborhood was quite different.
The culture in my neighborhood was that if you got good grades… They used to call kids “brainiacs” which was before the term ‘nerd’ ever came out. And that was a negative connotation for doing something positive. I was fortunate enough not to fall into that way of thinking.
I didn’t allow that talk — that teasing — to make me say, “Well, I’m not gonna do good in school because all the cool guys call me brainiac. I’ma be with them and fail a bunch of tests” and stuff like that.
It was more important to me to put a smile on my mother and my grandmother’s face than it was to impress the kids in my neighborhood.
So I walked in that for my entire school life, really: being one of the only kids in my building, my neighborhood to go away to college. There was other kids that went to college, but there was nobody in my family that had done it.
All of those things were motivating factors to me, but my mother and my grandmother always helped me with my homework and made sure I understood the importance of education — of school.
I had a really influential eighth grade teacher — her name was Mrs. Fullton. I actually shouted her out on my very first album cover, because she played a big part in me understanding what was outside of the walls of the neighborhood — of the hood. That there were other kinds of people out in the world we need to be able to communicate with, to get along with, to compete with on an intellectual level.
So that was being instilled in me at home as well as in middle school. And I just took those things and I ran with them. I’m happy that I did.
ON AVOIDING TROUBLE
I could’ve gone a completely different route very, very easily. There were a few turning points in my life where I could’ve gone a different route — I was fortunate enough that these women in my life gave me enough foundation. Because they weren’t there in those moments when I could’ve done this other thing — my mother wasn’t around.
I was just out hanging out with friends and the opportunity came up to go on Pitkin Avenue — which is a main street in my neighborhood — and snatch jewelry. That was the thing that was happening in the ‘80’s: “Yo, let’s go snatch some jewelry.” It was actually called “gettin’ money”. So you would snatch anything you could snatch: jewelry, purses, whatever.
My best friend at the time — me and him hung out every day; I was at his house every day. He decided to go get money with the bad kids, and they asked me did I wanna roll? I said, “Nah, I think I’m gonna stay around here and play football” or whatever I was doing. And they went.
Our lives as best friends from that day went completely in opposite directions. We were still cool, but… I didn’t hang at his house every day; he was always with these guys now. They were getting arrested, getting in trouble doing a lot of things, in-and-out of jail as adults.
That one decision to not go with them that one day: I think back to that, because it stands out to me. I didn’t realize how important that day was until a little bit later. But I remember that day as sort of a turning point for me.
There was a few others like that, but that was a key one.
ON MA_DOOM: SON OF YVONNE
A friend of mine had given me the DOOM instrumentals from the Special Herbs series. I was really just driving around listening to the instrumentals; it had to be about fifty different beats that I had. I had them on repeat — just driving and listening to them. Had no plans on doing anything with them but as I listened to them more and more, some ideas started to present themselves to me in terms of lyrics.
You listen to beats, then lyrics start to come.
So as those lyrics started to come to me, I started to jot a few things down. Before you knew it, I had eight or ten of the beats out of the fifty that I was like, “I could do a song to this.” I said maybe I’ll just do a mixtape — just throw something out there for free for the fans. That was the initial idea.
Then Fat Beats heard about this idea. We had a meeting with them for something else and my partner Rich brought up that this was the idea I was working on. And they were like, “Well, why would you want to put it out for free? We think you should put it out as a full-length — do physical CD’s and vinyl and everything.”
That’s when it turned into a thing — like a project. It was just going to be a mixtape, just something to throw out. And it turned into something else. I decided: if I was going to put this project out, I wanted it to be special in some way.
I decided to dedicate it to my mother’s memory, and do that title cut as kind of a way for me to heal a little bit. It’s definitely a little bit of therapy for me. I struggled with the loss of my mother because it was very sudden and unexpected. It wasn’t like she had an illness or longtime illness or something like that. So that’s why it was something very abrupt and came out of nowhere.
This was a way for me to try to heal; to just write that song and to write that album.
ON UPCOMING PROJECTS
On the new project, I’m extending… on the DOOM record, I’m around twelve years old. The new album that I’m working on, I’m entering high school; fourteen years old. I’m taking you through my four years of high school.
I’m growing up on this record.
And this an official solo record, not a special project like the DOOM project.
Screenplays and short films —all of those things are actually being talked about right now. We’re in discussions about me writing a short that will kind of be parallel to this new project. Instead of doing a music video, doing a short that has some of the music in it.
Kind of doing three songs, four songs off the album in this one short in some kind of cool way. It’s being talked about. I have a TV pilot that I’ve been writing for a couple months now — still trying to finish that up.
I have an idea to actually write a play, an off-Broadway play with a company called Rhymes Over Beats. My man Powermalu — who’s the eMC Music Director — he’s strongly connected with Rhymes Over Beats and they’re bringing me in to potentially be a writer and help them. Because they’re trying to put out more hip-hop-based Broadway-type plays; bring more of those to the people.
So I’m going to try to work on writing something like that. I’m going to have somebody else come in and help me write that, but it’s going to be based around the story on A Long Hot Summer.
ON MS DIAGNOSIS
The diagnosis was nothing more than an opportunity for me to wake up and to do more — and do it better. By far, I made my best music after the diagnosis. By far, I’ve done more touring and shows since the diagnosis. By far, I’ve written my best lyrics — my most heartfelt lyrics, my most personal lyrics, my most introspective lyrics — since the diagnosis.
All of that is just a testament to my determination to not let the diagnosis be the defining factor in who I’ve become.
There’s a lot more that I have to offer to the world after music. My sights are set on the future and continuing to entertain, continuing to contribute in any way possible creatively.
I’ve been interested in writing since junior year of high school. I started taking Advanced Placement English; I was in there with all the super-duper smart kids. I got to college and I was taking Advanced Honors English and Honors Writing courses in college because I realized that’s where my gift lies. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out how to use it, when to use it. And I’m going to continue.
The diagnosis was really a minor setback. What it did more than anything else was rededicate me to health, fitness, keeping my body strong, eating right. If I didn’t get that diagnosis, I might be thirty, forty pounds overweight right now, looking like a forty-something year-old rapper that’s struggling on stage with the big stomach and all of that.
I realized that I had to do something different and it kind of forced me to do that.
ON TRUTH
Being true to yourself has always been important to me. In this industry, you have an opportunity to be around a lot of people that fake the funk. They’re fake about who they are, about how tough they are, about how much money they have, about the lifestyle that they live. If you know those people a little bit more intimately, you know that none of what they’re presenting or representing is actually real or true.
It just makes you realize: I don’t want to be like that. That’s not what’s up.
Be who you are. Be true to who you are.
And I’ve just tried to always — not just in music, but in life — live my life that way. Just be true to who I am. Why be afraid to say: yo, I don’t smoke weed; I don’t do this, I don’t do that.
Guys are actually afraid to say it on a record if they don’t smoke. Some guys actually started smoking just to be able to say it on a record. It’s crazy. Some guys started carrying guns just to be able to say it on a record when they never lived their lives like that.
ON PERSEVERANCE
It’s actually one of the things that keeps me motivated to make good music, to continue to put out quality projects. Tom Brady — the quarterback for the New England Patriots — he stands out to me. Because when I saw his story, it touched me: him being not taken until the sixth round or whenever it was — it was something like six quarterbacks picked before him.
He took that disrespect… That position of, “Okay, nobody believes that I’m any good. Nobody believes that I could amount to anything.” As soon as he got his opportunity, he went crazy and did his thing.
And I’m nowhere near a Patriots fan, but when I watched that documentary called The Brady 6 about his story — him sitting on that couch with his parents, them being upset. In tears because all these rounds were going by, nobody was even giving him a look. Some of the jokes and stuff that was said about him — he just took all that and internalized it and became the greatest player he could be.
I feel like I have done that same thing in my career. I’ve just internalized all of the slights, all of the non-mentions.
There’s been Top 50 lists, Top 100 lists. To somehow not be mentioned on some of these by these journalists — those are things that I just internalize and I use them as energy. I use them as motivation and it just makes me work harder.
ON LOVE
I love what I do. I love being able to travel. I love my family, obviously.
I love the guys that I roll out with: Wordsworth, Stricklin, Powermalu, Da Angry Merch Guy. Pearl Gates is a new member of the crew.
It’s a beautiful thing to be able to earn a living doing what you love.
It doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes I seen people wind up in jobs for thirty years that they actually hate, but it’s what pays the bills and they stay there.
I’ve been blessed to be able to be put in a position where I didn’t have to do that, and I’m going to try to keep riding this wave of creativity.
ON TIME SPENT LIVING IN BOSTON
My two years in Malden was a culture shock honestly, coming from Brooklyn, New York: the projects, tons of people — just people everywhere — stuff always going on. Then to go to this quiet town where not a lot of Black people were living at the time.
My memories of Malden were actually all fun, good times because there were kids on my block that I hung out with. And we were doing stuff that I never did as a kid in Brooklyn: going out trying to catch frogs in the lake — just crazy stuff that I never had done before.
It was a totally different lifestyle for those two years living in Boston.
I definitely started picking up the accent. Because when I got back to Brooklyn, my friends were definitely teasing me like, “Yo, why are you saying ‘cah’ and ‘pahk’? What’s that about?” I had to make some quick adjustments in my speech.
But it was great memories. Me and my mom — she had got a job out that way, and we moved out there for those two years while she tried to make that job happen.
If the job had turned into something permanent, I would’ve literally grown up as a kid from Boston; I’d be known as a kid from Boston.
ON TRANSFORMATION INTO INSPIRER
It’s a little bit unusual. It’s not something you could ever dream of… I didn’t expect music or rapping to take me to the point where people in other countries around the world actually knew the words to my songs and would sing along to the songs. It was something that was totally unexpected, but I accept that.
I’m glad I can share my story with people from places all around the planet.
In a lot of ways, it’s a responsibility to make music that’s going to have an affect on people’s lives. To have people tell you, “That song saved my life. I was at a point where I felt like I wanted to end it all” or whatever the case may be. And something about something you did in your lyric or your music helped them out of a dark place — those kinds of things are pretty amazing.
It’s humbling, really — to know this music you’re making is having that kind of an affect on people that you’ve never met.
It’s pretty amazing, man.
Please read more of the #PROfiles interview with Masta Ace on Cuepoint:
