Happy 20th Anniversary to Masta Ace’s fourth studio album Disposable Arts, originally released October 30, 2001 (Note: select sources cite October 16, 2001 as the official release date.)
Sometimes when an artist decides to call it quits, it gives them the freedom and energy to make their final statement one of their best. Such is the case with Duval “Masta Ace” Clear, who, after a bit of a five-year hiatus, decided that he wanted to go out with a bang on his fourth album, Disposable Arts. Released 20 years ago through JCOR Records, it’s one of the cleverest concept albums ever released, documenting Ace’s experience in the streets of Brooklyn and as a student in the fictional Institute of Disposable Arts.
Ace has said Disposable Arts is his favorite and personally most important album in his catalogue. He put the record out with “no expectations” of its success or impact. “I just wanted to make a record that didn’t have any label influence, nobody in my ear… just the record I wanted to do,” he said in an interview with BlackoutTV. The result is a project in which Ace honors the era that raised him, while making more timeless music of his own. It’s one of the best releases of 2001, and it resides in my personal top 15 hip-hop albums released during the ’00s.
Even before Disposable Arts, Ace was no stranger to narrative albums. I’d argue that every single project he’d released to that point was a concept album, from Take A Look Around (1990) to SlaughtaHouse (1993) to Sittin’ On Chrome (1995). The latter, one of Ace’s most successful albums, was conceptualized by his label at the time, Delicious Vinyl. Based on the success of his single “Born To Roll,” they requested he build an album around car culture. Ace agreed and tailored their suggestion to fit his vision as an artist.
After the success of Sittin’ On Chrome, Ace had recorded an entire new album. However, his label wasn’t satisfied with the project, unhappy that it didn’t sound much like his previous release. They shelved the album and dropped him as an artist shortly thereafter.
Afterwards, Ace figured that the rap audience wasn’t interested in his music anymore, and decided to work behind the scenes. He helped executive produce Game Over (2000), a video-game inspired compilation produced mostly by DJ Rob and Domingo. He released a few singles independently during the late ’90s and 2000. After a brief tour in England, Ace decided he was ready to release another project.
Ace has said that he had recorded seven or eight songs before he came up with the formal concept for the album, shaping the narrative around the already finished material. And one theme that stuck with him was that in the early 2000s, hip-hop music was increasingly disposable. Rappers would record 40 songs for an album and only use 12. Artists could put a year’s worth of effort into giving the label what they said they wanted, only to have the label shelve the album without blinking an eye.
Disposable Arts begins with Ace being released from prison after a five-year bid, swearing to make the best of his second chance. In order to avoid falling back into bad habits in his Brooklyn neighborhood, he enrolls in the aforementioned I.D.A., which is essentially a hip-hop trade school. While Ace takes such courses as “Bronx History,” “Street Promo,” and “MPC 101,” his girlfriend continues to get caught up in the street life. After “graduating,” Ace decides to start his own label and management company.
Parts of Disposable Arts’ story are based on stuff Ace was really going through. “Too Long,” the album’s brief opening track, is a not-so-subtle play on his return to the world of hip-hop. Ace reflects on his impending “freedom” with a mix of apprehension and anger. “Pacing like a caged lion with rage crying,” he raps. “All them days trying to engage with the iron / Stuck in between a rock and a hard place / I got down on my knees, looked into God’s face.”
Ace produced “Too Long” himself, but he brought in a whole multitude of producers to shape the soundscape of Disposable Arts. He employs some well-known beat makers, such as Ayatollah and Domingo, as well as a few who were largely unknown quantities at the time, such as Xplicit, Gerrad C. Baker, and Croatian beat-smith Kool Ade.
Ace enlists DJ Paul Nice to produce “Don’t Understand,” Disposable Arts’ first and only single. Here, Ace is more celebratory about his return to the spotlight, even smirking at the possibility of others underestimating his prowess, and declaring “I love rap no matter how much I say I hate it.” Paul Nice hooks up a track designed to be blasted out of a car on a sunny day, using string and vocal samples from Sister Sledge’s “Easy To Love.” Greg Nice is fittingly exuberant on the track’s hook, channeling his ad-libs from Nice & Smooth’s “Old To The New.”
Greg Nice is just one of the album’s many guests. Along a multitude of dope guest verses that appear throughout Disposable Arts, there’s some great voiceover work as well. Tonedeff voices a hilarious infomercial for the I.D.A., describing course work to help students succeed in such careers as “A&R Bitch N***a, Shiesty Label Guy. Street Promotions Vandal, or Half-Assed Producer.” MC Paul Barman makes a few appearances as “Paul from Saskatchewan,” Ace’s roommate while attending the university. His “freestyle” that he kicks on his initial appearance is still hilarious, as he raps, “Jumping Jehoshaphat! And something that goes with that / I’m more funky than a four-year-old yoga mat.”
Though the “story” of the album surrounds Ace’s release from prison and University attendance, the album’s other dominant theme is the grim realities of the inner-city in the late ‘90s/early ‘00s. Disposable Arts paints a stark picture of pre-September 11th, pre-gentrification Brooklyn. Before neighborhoods like Bedstuy and Dumbo became trendy housing markets for transplants, it got real in the streets.
Ace transports the listeners to a time when taking the A or C train to Nostrand Ave. and walking north could be a dicey proposition. Ace explains how the constant neighborhood violence and stress grind can beat down souls on “Every Other Day.” “Block Episode” presents three different perspectives of a deadly neighborhood shooting, with Ace playing the part of the observers, Punch taking the role of the revenge-seeking killer, and Wordsworth adopting the persona of the unsuspecting straight-A student who catches a fatal stray.
Ace provides another informal tour of the neighborhood on “Take A Walk,” which has become one of the most beloved songs of his rejuvenated career. Here, Ace and newcomer Apocalypse describe a neighborhood block and its cast of denizens, detailing their personalities and all the dirt they’re involved in. It plays like a more rugged version of Take A Look Around’s title track, with Ace and Apocalypse opting for straight spitting instead of spoken word. Gerrad C. Baker produced the track, splicing in samples from Spanky & Our Gang’s “Lazy Day.”
“Unfriendly Game” is inspired by Main Source’s “Just A Friendly Game Of Baseball,” except with Ace and Milwaukee-born emcee Stricklin likening the drug trade to football. Ace, a noted grid-iron fanatic, solidly weaves football references in his verses. “And if you want your corner back you better wear a vest,” he raps. “Just in case, you gotta catch a bullet to the chest / Believe me that shit can be a humdinger / ‘Cause every quarterback in this league’s a gunslinger.” Ace has said that he wanted Large Professor to appear on the song, but was unable to connect with him.
Disposable Arts features an incredibly strong trio of collaborations with some outstanding female emcees. “Hold U” is the best of the three, where much like Common’s “I Used To Love H.E.R.,” Ace speaks of his love for the microphone as if it were a woman. Jean Grae closes the song rhyming from the perspective of the mic itself, rapping, “And there’s still cats who try to touch me when they spot me alone / Trying to tap me just to see if I’m turned on / But it’s the way you speak to me, it’s like we on the same frequency / And when you hold me, you make me peak, come on.”
Ace teams with Rah Digga on “Type I Hate,” where they express extreme distaste for those who bring negativity into their lives. Meanwhile, “Dear Yvette” is a flip of a familiar dynamic. It starts as a straight-forward remake of LL Cool J’s song of the same name, with Ace chastising the once “nice” neighborhood girls who increasingly play things fast and loose, sexually. Jane Doe then speaks from the woman’s perspective, explaining her troubled upbringing and how stripping and sex work have now given her agency. She ends by chastising Ace for not really “knowing” her.
“Something’s Wrong” is the album’s best battle rap-oriented offering, featuring Ace’s first team-up with Stricklin and Young Zee. Ace had sought to get Eminem to appear on the song as well; Em had long credited Ace as one of his key influences, going as far as to name drop him on stage when accepting his first GRAMMY. However, even though Em agreed to do the verse, Ace wasn’t able to secure it before Disposable Arts’ release.
Instead, Ace ended up bringing in Zee, Slim Shady’s homie from The Outsidaz and New Jersey native. Strick gives the track’s stand-out performance, starting things off with a lengthy verse. “You on some ’bout to do, I’m on some already done shit,” he raps. “I'll burn you with the same light you just lit up your blunt wit’.”
Ace uses “Acknowledge” to settle some hash against two different targets, blasting the group The High & The Mighty and the rapper Boogieman in successive verses over a chopped string sample. In hindsight, both beefs stemmed from misunderstandings. The dis towards The High & The Mighty was spurred by members of Ace’s crew and collaborators on Disposable Arts mishearing some lyrics during the crew’s set at the CMJ music conference. Believing H&M affiliate Cage said “Fuck Masta Ace and SlaughtaHouse (the actual lyrics were “Bumping Masta Ace, I walk into a Jewish Slaughterhouse”), they informed Ace, who in turn wrote a scathing verse directed at the duo. The High & The Mighty contacted Ace after hearing the song, befuddled as to why he dissed them, considering they were huge fans of his music.
Ace’s issue with Boogieman began because the latter believed that Ace’s “Ghetto Like” was a bite of his own single, “Ghetto Love,” and directed “Just You Wait” at the O.G. While Ace ended up squashing the issue with The High & The Mighty, his feud with Boogieman led to the two battling at a Lyricist Longue event just months before the album’s release.
Occasionally, Ace pauses to enjoy some of the spoils that a rap career can offer. He envisions the wealth that hip-hop can bring him on “P.T.A. (Planes, Trains, and Automobiles).” Joined by West Coast legends King Tee and J-Ro and Tha Alkaholiks, they seemingly try to outdo each other with visions of opulence. Over a murky track by Deacon of the Cunninlynguists, Ace dreams of buying Hammer’s old mansion and racing Shaq down La Brea to Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles, while King Tee chills in his “castle with a draw-bridge” and takes off in a full airship from his private airstrip.
However, Ace’s exasperation with the music industry is tough to hide. It’s the most apparent on “Enuff,” where he channels years’ worth of frustration into three verses, venting against record labels for backing image over substance as well as subpar rappers for buying into the charade. Rhyming from the perspective similar to a grizzled warrior, he raps, “Wrote enough rhymes to be on album number 50 / You’ll see how I’m on it, if you hung enough with me / The rap game’s a book, and I’ve read mad chapters / And if you ask me, it ain’t enough mad rappers.”
For all the come-back talk throughout much of Disposable Arts, at the end the album, Ace sounds like he’s ready to call it quits. He lays bare all of his self-doubt on “Dear Diary,” which was apparently recorded during the aftermath of the battle with Boogieman. In what I imagine isn’t a coincidence, the track sounds like it could have been lifted from Eminem’s early catalogue, from Ace’s cadence and voice down to the Moody Blues’ sample. Ace writes from the perspective of his own diary, who tells him in no uncertain terms that he’s over the hill. “And don’t ever again show your face on a stage,” he raps. “Or write the name Masta Ace on a page, kid, ya done / Whoever let you back in the door should get a smack in the jaw / ‘Cause you sure shouldn’t be rapping no more.”
The album-ending, Domingo-produced track “No Regrets” was designed to be the swan song to Ace’s career. Over a section of David McCallum’s “The Edge,” Ace sums up his achievements, shouts out everyone he’s collaborated with, and sounds content with walking off into the sunset. “If the luxuries in life I can’t of course afford,” he raps. “If I never win a Billboard or a Source Award / I wouldn’t want ya pity or ya sympathy / Even if Marley never put me on ‘The Symphony.’”
Disposable Arts went out of print almost immediately, as JCOR folded less than a month after the album dropped; Ace has said that the label had ceased operations by Thanksgiving 2001. But despite its scarcity, it has still persevered as one of Ace’s most beloved projects.
Though Ace intended Disposable Arts to be his final artistic statement, the album instead extended his career by 20 years and served as the template for all of his future projects. A Long Hot Summer (2004) served as the album’s prequel, and subsequent albums have covered various points in his life, including his childhood (2012’s MA DOOM: Son of Yvonne) and his high school years (2016’s The Falling Season). He’s even used a similar narrative structure on his both of his projects with his eMC crew and his separate team-ups with Ed OG and producer Marco Polo.
On the album’s final skit, “Last Rights,” Paul Barman makes one last appearance, providing a postscript and encouraging listeners to listen to the classic albums of the ’80s and ’90s. He implores listeners to “listen to where you’ve been. Preserve the music.” They’re fitting sentiments for an album that reflects many of the best things about hip-hop culture. Even though it could have served as a definitive exclamation point for Ace as an artist, I’m happy that it rekindled the fire inside of him and inspired another two decades of great material.
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