Blue Skies, Sunshine

Lately I’ve been on a Masta Ace kick. I can’t get enough of his music. It’s probably because I’ve been listening to CunninLynguists’ A Piece of Strange a lot lately. APOS is 16 tracks that make up a story. Listening to the album from beginning until end, it’s an amazing story. The tracks hold their own if you just want to listen to some tracks too. You won’t feel you missed out on something. How is that related to Masta Ace? Well, Masta Ace has done albums like this in the past. The album Disposable Arts is the story of Ace getting out of prison and turning his life around by enrolling in school. This isn’t an ordinary school, it is a school where you learn to tag, dj, and even rap. There are some great skits featuring Ace’s roommate, MC Paul Barman. What makes the album so great is that it too tells a story and the tracks are also able to be played independently. The latest album by Ace, A Long Hot Summer tells the story of how Ace wound up in jail. It’s almost a prequel to Disposable Arts. The story involves Ace writing and preparing to go on tour. He brings along a neighborhood friend, Fats Belvedere, a local Italian sounding hustler with money making schemes. It turns out that Ace was pretty much in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people, and the album discusses how he got caught up in it. It’s another fantastic album. More rappers should be creative and do these things with their music. This is the type of hip hop that should be on the airwaves. Sadly, it’s not. I suggest you all check out the albums mentioned in this post if you are looking for something different. And the first time you listen, really listen, and pay attention, as if you were watching a movie or reading a book. There is some great story telling there.