What's happening folks! This anniversary salute big ups an album that's considered an underground masterpiece. The curator of this album is an over thirty year emcee who's been considered among the most influential emcees out in the game. Always seeking ways to innovate and come up concept to illustrate his points and narratives, this former Juice Crew member delivered an album that highlighted a young man that just got out of prison and realizes how bad his burrough of Brooklyn has become so he enrolls into the fictional School of the Disposable Arts hoping to make a better way of life than what he's been exposed to once he got out. Highly regarded as arguably the album of his career on a critical level, the artist went from previous efforts such as Take A Look Around, Sittin' On Chrome, and Slaughtahouse, and constructed an EXCELLENT album. This is a look at Masta Ace and his album, Disposable Arts.
While gaining notoriety for his aforementioned albums, he knew after being out of the game for about six years he needed to reinvent with a whole new focus for an album. Therefore, he presented Disposable Arts. Similar to albums such as A Prince Among Thieves or Deltron 3030, this is an album that, although have a solid collection of cuts, the album makes sense listening to it from top to bottom. From the moment his character is let out of jail, he's reminded of what put him in in the first place with the moody and somber collab with "Block Episode". From there, he explains his need to have a better life off the streets to girlfriend Lisa (played by seemingly forgotten about emcee Jane Doe), which leads to one of the more bumping cuts on the effort, the Ayatollah-crafted "Hold U" featuring the legendary Jean Grae. He later meets up with his awkward yet interesting roommate (played by the infamous MC Paul Barman) in which he verbally walks his roomie through Brooklyn on "Take A Walk". May we just add, those bars by Barman ranged from cringe-worthy to hilarious during this skit.
Getting adjusted to this new way of life for "Ace" as his roommate Paul (Barman) is very reminiscent of White Mike from The Wayans Bros. Paul helps him out with his classes and gives him the scoop on what to expect from these classes, which leads into one of the most underrated diss cuts you'll ever find in his scathing scorching of forgotten about underground emcee Boogieman and the almost forgotten-about High & The Mighty, "Acknowledge". Suffice it to say, we heard little to nothing else from either of these acts after this cut was heard. From there, the narrative wraps up with arguably one of his best cuts in his career, "No Regrets", a reflective look back at his career over a hypnotic beat provided by Domingo.
Other strong cuts like "Unfriendly Game", "Dear Yvette", and "Dear Diary" help round out a release that highlights how important Masta Ace to hip-hop. He took a fairly average concept of an ex-con finding his way back into society and wanting to get off the same streets that made him one in the first place, and some very dope hip-hop to it with an assorted cast of characters to help tell his story. Everyone on this project delivered effectively while not overshadowing Ace and the production for the most part was very suitable to each story being told. Ace sounded like he had the same hunger from his Juice Crew days and from the rather poignant album cover of him sitting in a driver's seat with no car, it was apparent this album would be the opposite of Sittin' On Chrome in practically every way.
Later releases such as the "prequel" to this one, A Long Hot Summer, the excellent collab effort with the late MF DOOM, MA DOOM: Son Of Yvonne, his quite dope group album with Strick, Punchline and Wordsworth as eMC, The Show, The Falling Season and the knocking AF effort with producer Marco Polo, A Breukelen Story, show that Masta Ace is one of hip-hop's most respected and acclaimed emcees and it's like the fine wine theory, Ace would just get better with age. With Disposable Arts, this marked a whole new benchmark for the veteran emcee and still stands as his absolute magnum opus. This goes out to Masta Ace and we lift our proverbial glasses to Disposable Arts. Until next time folks!
No comments:
Post a Comment