You Can't Stop the Power of the Ace in Your Eye

I've touched upon this before. Here's the Reed Richards version (because I got home this morning, drunk as a lord, and listened to Go Where I Send Thee half a dozen times before falling asleep*):

I dig Masta Ace so much that, occasionally, I'll spell it Ase as tribute. If this were 1993, I'd be sitting in art class, trying in vain to sculp a fucked-up earthenware ashtray, arguing to everyone in proximity that Slaughtahouse is the most underappreciated hip-hop album of all time, Ace an unheralded genius. Much has changed since then (I got laid a few times, for one; praise Allah), but, still, Ace remains overlooked to all but a few cellar dwelling purists. If this were ball -- and, really, what isn't? -- Ace would be Robert Horry: never having a prime, yet staying consistent spanning his entire career, and always coming through in the clutch.

Not a career retrospective, I simply want to reminisce over the Masta. As I've previously mentioned on this

(testament of sublime prose)

blog, if someone had told me 17 years ago that Masta Ace would have the most consistent -- if not the most commercially lucrative -- career of any Juice Crew member, I would have told him he was crazy. Then I woulda thrown a Sega Genesis controller at his face.

Yet Ace never released a subpar effort (Big Daddy Kane's A Taste of Chocolate and Prince of Darkness, anyone?) or, to quote Mike Tyson, faded into Bolivian like Kool G Rap. He's never been mainstream, but he's never been far from the collective true head consciousness. And it can be argued that he's only gotten better in the veteran stage of his career. A Long Hot Summer, if indeed his final release, was on some Jordan buzzer beater in the '98 Finals shit -- the crowning achievement of one of the greatest, most innovative MCs to ever bless a mic. (Let's pretend we live in a world where Jordan's ill-conceived and conceited comeback to play for the Washington Wizards never happened, shall we? I like that world. They have grilled-kimchi-flavored potato chips there.)

Anyway, I am officially declaring May 13th Masta Ace Day. There's no other special day on this date as far as I know, so why not**? Do yourself a favor and peep the following vids. And if you're particularly resourceful, try to download the hard-as-fuck to locate Go Where I Send Thee, a track I will proclaim is unequivocally one of the top 5 hip-hop songs of all time. Word to Bill Simmons: I will not argue this.


Saturday Night Live:



Slaughtahouse:



Me & the Biz:



(Ayo, Lincoln wasn't Cuban. That line will forever crack me up.)

And The Crooklyn Dodgers:



* Also inspired by Baron Davis's ill 360-degrees layup yesterday. In the pantheon of amazing shots, that ranks not far behind Jeff Malone's falling-out-of-bounds 3 pointer and

(K-Hot, read no further)


Leo getting capped in The Departed. Simply stunning.

** How long, I wonder, until my mother officially disowns me.