A little while back we were lucky to get some time with Masta Ace. This was not too long after the release of his latest project, Falling Season, and we were able to get his thoughts on a variety of topics past, present and future. Learn something new about a legend below…

Interviewer: So right off the bat I wanted to ask you about Falling Season. So it’s about your high school years, your friends, challenges, and it’s really a story-telling project, is that correct?

Ace: Yeah definitely. It’s telling my story, it’s basically encapsulating my life in those years between the age of 14 and 18.

Interviewer: And it was produced entirely by KIC Beats?

Ace: Yeah. He’s from California, LA, he actually worked with me on the eMC album. He did a couple of songs on the eMC album which actually both wound up being singles and that’s how I first got exposed to his music and decided to do the whole album with him.

Interviewer: And I read in another piece that after you heard the beats he had, the writing process was just really easy for you. How long did it take for you on this project?

Ace: Each time that I got a beat from him and got a song idea for him I was able to write the song pretty quickly, but you know I don’t write songs every single day, so… it took a few months but it was more so deciding okay this was one of the beats I definitely want to use, and then writing it. Like I think Young Black Intelligent, that was the first song that I wrote on the album…yeah I wrote that song pretty much while driving home from Brooklyn back to New Jersey. I got the ideas for that and wrote that.

Interviewer: Yeah that’s my favorite track on the project. You know I’m curious about Chuck D’s poem at the end, how did that happen?

Ace: Well, I’ve known Chuck for a long time; we have mutual respect for each other, as our contributions to Hip Hop, but I just felt like it was worth reaching out because his voice was the voice that I heard at the end of the song. So I got the idea that this was a matter of … the worse he could say is no.

Interviewer: Right.

Ace: So I reached out and I sent him the song and I sent the instrumental and he sent it back within a week.

Interviewer: And did you have any idea what he was going to do on it?

Ace: I had no idea. All I did was…I figured he heard the lyrics, and he understood what the section of music that he needed to speak on were. I told him just kind of you know “You don’t have to rap but just kind of sum the record up the best you can,” and he took it and ran with it.

Interviewer: Yeah well I think it’s really cool, it’s a nod to the spoken word culture.

Ace: Yeah, definitely.

Interviewer: And so… what are your favorite tracks on the new project?

Ace: The new record, definitely Black Intelligent, that’s the Number One track, you know I still get emotional when I listen to that record with somebody or with friend of mine who haven’t heard it yet. I still get a little bit emotional listening to it, but definitely Young Black Intelligent definitely. Mister Bus Driver is another favorite of mine; Say Goodbye; Labyrinth. There’s a few man, there’s a few, Story of Me.

Interviewer: You talk about the challenges for yourself growing up in Brownsville on this project quite a bit. Thinking about that and then today, do you think it’s changed much for youth out there?

Ace: It’s change, but not for the good. You know it was always a dangerous neighborhood but not to the extremes that it is now like there wasn’t droves of teens running around guns when I was a teenager. You might have had one or two cats that were rumored to have guns but it wasn’t like blatantly running around looking for people to shoot, you know that kind of stuff wasn’t happening. And you know the rivalry between neighboring housing projects has just completely gone out of control now. Back when I was a kid we would play the rival housing projects in football games and that was kind of the way you settled rivalries, you’d get out there and…football…

Interviewer: And get the aggression off.

Ace: Yeah, yeah.

The Falling Season by Masta Ace

Interviewer: So you feel like it’s actually gotten worse.

Ace: Oh it’s definitely gotten worse because now it’s that much easier to get your hands on a gun and you got the gang culture now that was never a part of…part of Brooklyn. Now the gang culture is part of it and it’s just like it’s just the Bloods and Cripps are in Brooklyn…it’s in Brownsville, it’s there everywhere.

Interviewer: And it never used to be like that.

Ace: Right. The gangs in the 70s they pretty much…they were using like blunt instrument, baseball bats and things like that. You might get beat up pretty good but you know…

Interviewer: Yeah, what’s the movie? I can’t remember the name right now and I was just watching it… from the 80s…

Ace: The Warriors.

Interviewer: Yeah, the Warriors.

Ace: That was a super Hollywood depiction of what was going on back then. Hollywood took it and just ramped it up, like way way up you know. Definitely cats was wearing leather vests, feathers in their hair and things like that, but Hollywood always has to overdramatize it to make it more interesting for the screen.

Interviewer: Football is a big theme on the project too. You played, and then you coached for a while. Was it that process of coaching that helped influence this idea of Falling Season. Taking you back?

Ace: It wasn’t really the fact that coaching, it was more the fact of playing, you know I’m still in touch with friends with many of the same guys that I was teammates with in high school, like we go to each other’s barbecues and our kids know each other and stuff like that. So you know I was never far from my high school football experiences because of that fact that our head coach, he’s around, he’s still…we have like a Facebook page and all the guys are on there talking and our head coach keeps us abreast of different things that are going on with the school and with the team. And so the connection was always there.

Interviewer: Its cool you’ve got some of the kids of your friends on the project playing their dads, and I think your coach is on the album too?

Ace: Yeah, my actual high school coach is playing himself on the album.

Interviewer: It’s clear that he had a huge influence on you and your friends and…

Ace: Yes. Huge.

Interviewer: …and you kind of wanted to like pay that back when you got into coaching yourself?

Ace: Oh yeah, I mean what my coach…what our coach did for us when we were that age, I wanted to see if I could give that to some young men when I got into coaching, and I definitely, to this day, I’m still in touch with a lot of the guys that I coached when I was coaching in Brooklyn. I coached at the same school for nine years and over those nine years a lot of relationships with a lot of young guys, they still stay in touch with me, they still wish me Merry Christmas and things like that, Happy Thanksgiving, I get those text messages sometimes, I get those phone calls, and it’s just a great thing. And they tell me… they’re not even in their 20s now, some of them are like approaching 30 years old, 20/27 years old, 28 years old, and they tell me the impact that I had on them, and that makes me feel like it was all worthwhile, makes me feel good to know that I was able to influence one or two young guys to kind of go in the right direction.

Interviewer: Did they ever want to battle?

Ace: Naa. See when I coached it was never known what I did outside of coaching…

Interviewer: Interesting.

Ace: …and it wasn’t spoken … you know over time kids would find out, but they were some much younger that they were really far removed from my music career, so they didn’t…they didn’t really my career, they never saw any of the videos. So it was a very gradual thing but it was only like one or two kids over the years, maybe three or four that would come up to me and say “I heard this song that you were on and I liked it.” And I would say “We don’t talk about music over here.” And they go “I know, I know, I just wanted to tell you…” And I just always…it was never going to be a topic of discussion. I didn’t …anybody feel like I was their peer, cause I’m not and if they look at you as a rap artist, now they think they can relate to you in a different way, they talk to you in a different way. It’s always about respect and being respected as a coach and as a grown man and not them thinking we are on the same level cause they rap and I rap.

Interviewer: So where is Disposable Arts at in this period, because I was reading that, that project is Number One to you because of the way it rejuvenated your place in the game…

Ace: Yeah, that’s accurate. Disposable Arts dropped in 2001, and I started coaching…my first year coaching was 2002.

Interviewer: Alright. Okay so that happened and then you started coaching, and so then you experienced this kind of resurrection with the hip hop fans.

Ace: Exactly.

Interviewer: Earlier this year you wrote an open letter to Hip Hop. I saw your quote about “the soul never left, the soul just hasn’t been being broadcast…” and I’m curious, since you wrote that letter has your perspective changed at all like just kind of speak on how…well you’ve seen a lot of waves in Hip Hop.

Ace: Yeah definitely. I will say that my feelings are still the same. The soul is definitely still there, I feel like there are some good positive signs out there. Every single record it’s not just about the new dance or the new dance craze, and those are the things that kind of keep me encouraged.

Interviewer: Who do you see leading that today?

Ace: I think J-Cole, I think Kendrick, I think Big Sean, I think Joey Badass. Those are just some of the names. There’s guys man that are doing it in the way that I kind of feel like is the right way, and you know that’s my take, that’s my opinion.

Interviewer: Do you feel like we need more political and social influence back in the music? It’s just not as prevalent as it used to be.

Ace: Yeah, it’s unfortunate that a lot of the younger generation they don’t really have that connection to social consciousness, and it’s always needed in Hip Hop, it’s always kind of been a part of what Hip Hop was. And you know hip hop has always been kind of the CNN of the street showing what was really happening in the neighborhoods around America, in the urban neighborhoods. And if our young people get too far away from that where all they’re doing is doing the new dance crazes and popping volleys and you know just drifting off, you’re going to lose a whole generation of young people who are going to be walking in the fog and not realize. Then all of a sudden you look up and you got the wrong person in the White House and you wonder how’d that happen.

Interviewer: Right. The drug stuff is crazy to me in the music because I mean when I was younger it was like cats would be smoking a little weed, drinking some brew, but that was it, you were supposed to stay on point. People are getting strung out on benzos…

Ace: Drinking cough syrup and all that…That was actually stuff that cats used to get teased about, it was a shameful thing if you were doing that kind of stuff, you would go hide. Now dudes rap about it on records, with pride. Hopefully we don’t lose this whole generation.

Interviewer: Did you gravitate towards other elements besides MCing?

Ace: I started off as a DJ.

Interviewer: You started off as a DJ?

Ace: MCing was like really maybe the third thing that I did. I DJed first and I used to…we called it “popping”. It’s called like “Electric Boogie” or whatever they called the…it’s just a different name. We called it popping. I DJed and I popped, and then I started kind of dabbling around with rhymes later on, like when I first got out of high school a little before that, and then in the mix of me going to high school I started getting interested in graffiti and just writing little graf around my neighborhood buildings and things like that. So I’ve done all four aspects of it cause that was the fun thing to do.

Interviewer: What does it mean to you to leave your mark on Hip Hop?

Ace: Well, you know I’m widely considered one of the more underrated I guess, artists out there, for whatever reason…

Interviewer: Do you think you’re underrated?

Ace: I’m overlooked.

Interviewer: Overlooked.

Ace: That’s a better way to put it. I do this music, I do it from the heart, I do music that I feel like is going to be helpful to society, to people and help tell stories, entertain at the same time. And nowadays some of that kind of gets overlooked because we’re in that fast-food society now where people just want a quick song they can dance to, bop their head to, super simple lyrics, “I don’t have to think too much, I just want to dance and get my drink on.” And they go home and I think the music that I’ve made is more like an author of a novel. Most people in society don’t want to read novels, they would rather just watch reality TV, they don’t want to sit down and read a book, that takes too much, it’s too much energy, it’s too much effort. But I’ve stuck to my guns and I continue to write books while other cats do sit-coms, and that’s just what it is. The sit-coms appeal to a wider audience but there is a niche audience that loves to read books, and that’s the audience that I feel like I serve.

Interviewer: People talk a lot about what real hip hop is. What is real hip hop? Can you even define it?

Ace: I mean I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s one thing, hip hop has always been a bunch of different things or… you know I would rather just say “rap music” cause it’s music and we all… everybody’s rapping over it so that’s a easier term. Hip hop encompasses a lot more things than just rapping and beats, there’s more to hip hop than that. So that’s why I hesitate to say real hip hop music cause it’s… It’s actually a term that I use as a kind of a cliché all the time. I do a radio drop, I say my name, the station, and then I say real hip hop. But what we’re really talking about is rap music and cats rapping over music, and there’s always been a variety of different types of music that was in our culture, some of it good, some of it not good.

Interviewer: Right. You’ve talked about the balance. You know you had NWA but you had a Tribe Called Quest, you had different people expressing things so there’s just more balance…

Ace: Absolutely, that’s how it was, and the radio…the commercial radio stations they understood that balance and they respected that balance, and you could hear Wu-Tang Clan, and then after the commercial break they would put on the Two Live Crew with Scott Walker talking about shaking booties, and then right after that they might put on Kwame and then Ma D. So you had this mixture of different messages, different visuals, different concepts in music that were all being spread. So the hip hop fan and the rap fan was more well-rounded, they weren’t one thing, people liked more than one thing, so when you go to a concert you could see Big Daddy K and NWA on the same stage, K coming out in a three-piece suit and a high top theme with a bunch of jewelery; NWA coming out in Raider’s gear and dressed like gang bangers, but you could get both things on that same night, and that’s what kind of hip hop kind of misses now.

Interviewer: Yeah, and it’s interesting too…you’d see the other elements present in the crowd or around the show much more. There’d be like those big breaking circles…

Ace: Go to Europe. Go to Europe, you see it every show.

Interviewer: Right. So it’s funny you mention that, I was going to ask you about the overseas love and if you see a noticeable difference?

Ace: Oh it’s very noticeable. They respect and love our culture more than we do here in the United States, and that’s just what it is…

Interviewer: I feel you there. The graffiti game in Spain, I mean it’s nuts in Spain. And it’s like different areas of Europe are specialized in the different elements…

Ace: And they’re taking it to another level. If you look at the graph that they’re writing now, it almost looks like a computer did it, some of stuff they’re doing. And it’s the same thing with the break dancing, the moves that I see now…the Red Bull BC one Championship that go around the world, world championship in breaking. The dancing, the big boy dancing that they’re doing now, the moves are like astronomically different, better, just at a whole other level, like they’re what? You’re talking about the best breaking crews, the 80s, RockSteady, crews like that, they weren’t doing any moves anywhere near the stuff these guys are doing now.

Interviewer: Yeah, the DJing too.

Ace: That too.

Interviewer: You were touring in Europe when you got the spark for Disposable Arts, is that true?

Ace: Yeah, it was that tour of 2000.

Interviewer: In 2000. Do you have a favorite local hip hop scene in Europe? Is there one city or country that just really is blowing you away more than the others?

Ace: I mean I’ve got to say Germany because we do the most shows in Germany and we’ve been to some cities in Germany, Berlin, Hamburg, like Munster, we’ve been to these cities seven/eight times and for it to still be the turnout of 400 people, 500 hundred, 800 people coming out to see the show…

Interviewer: Yeah, they don’t get tired.

Ace: It’s incredible to me!

Interviewer: Yeah, they want to be there… it’s something else too about that appreciation of the live music.

Ace: Yes. They love it man, they love it, and they thirst for it, and if you put on a good show and you give them something to be excited about, they’re going to give it back.

Interviewer: You’ve probably been to Japan several times?

Ace: I’ve never been Asia. I’m talking to some people right now, they’re trying to put together my first ever trip there.

Interviewer: I’ve got a couple random ones for you. So I saw an interview with Craig G and he was talking about when you recorded The Symphony, and how when it came time to rhyme nobody wanted to go, until you stepped up. I mean he specifically said you just “bodied it”, and then everyone jumped on.

Ace: I wasn’t even supposed to be on the song. They were writing their rhymes and I was just kind of chilling and because there was a hesitation on who was going to go first, Marly asked me to just kind of…I think he said “Warm the mike up for these guys.” So I just went in and spit a verse, it wasn’t written for that song, it wasn’t written for that purpose, it was just a verse that I had memorized and I walked around with in my head, and I spit that verse. And that became the first verse of The Symphony – just by mistake really.

Interviewer: Do you remember when you came up with that verse?

Ace: No. I had those rhymes…like I walked around with 10 to 15 memorized rhymes for any occasion, battles mostly; but I had 10 battle rhymes in my head, and I have maybe another five that were just for random whatever, and that was one of those random-whatever rhymes that I had in my head.

Interviewer: History. And so that’s something else I want to ask you about because I hadn’t read this before, that you were in a session with Will Smith for Millennium?

Ace: Yes.

Interviewer: And how did that come together?

Ace: Well Jazzy Jeff, a good friend…he was bringing writers in to Philly to help write songs for Will for the album and so we went out the Philly, we wrote a bunch of stuff, he picked what he picked.

Interviewer: What are you reading these ?

Ace: Man. The last thing I read was The Wahls Protocols…it’s actually a book about this doctor who had MS, I’m just trying to like read up on different ways of eating and nutrition, and…. So that’s what that book was all about. The last two books I read was like basically about that, improving your health and nutrition in different ways. It was about this Paleo diet, how to eat right, stuff like that. But I need to read a good kind of fiction book or just something a little different than education just to give me a good balance.

Interviewer: Well it’s been a pleasure and thank you for your time.

Ace: Thank you man. Take care.