Happy 30th Anniversary to Masta Ace Incorporated’s second & final studio album (Masta Ace’s third studio album) Sittin’ On Chrome, originally released May 2, 1995.
“Compromise” is considered a dirty word when it comes to making music. When we hear a song or album, we feel the need to believe that it is an accurate and unvarnished representation of what is in the artist’s soul. I, myself, have used the term “uncompromised” to praise countless albums in features for this site. The idea that an artist would “compromise” their vision in service to an outside party’s desires is an anathema to many a musical purist.
That said, listeners really don’t know how the sausage gets made. When it comes to recording and releasing a project, compromises are made a lot more often than we’d like to acknowledge. Whether an artist is working with a major label or a small independent, the final product is frequently the result of some creative trade-offs.
Duval “Masta Ace” Clear has frequently said that he considers Sittin’ On Chrome his “compromise album.” Released 30 years ago, it was his third project and his second with the Delicious Vinyl imprint. It wasn’t an album that he had envisioned making, but one that his label specifically requested he record. However, Sittin’ On Chrome never feels like it’s contrived. It’s not Ace’s best project, but it’s still eminently enjoyable, and has aged well over the last three decades.
When Sittin’ On Chrome dropped, Ace was one of hip-hop’s underappreciated talents. The Brooklyn-based rapper had made his debut on Marley Marl’s In Control Vol. 1 (1988) compilation and kicked the amazing opening verse to the game-changing “The Symphony” posse cut. He signed with Cold Chillin’ Records and continued working with Marley Marl while recording the stellar Take A Look Around (1990). He then found a home at Delicious Vinyl, where he released his sophomore project SlaughtaHouse (1993), one of the best albums of the 1990s.
Sittin’ On Chrome was built around the success of one song: “Born To Roll.” “Born To Roll” was a remix that Ace did for “Jeep Ass N****h,” SlaughtaHouse’s first single. He transformed the bass-heavy East Coast-based jeep anthem “Jeep Ass…” and gave it the sound and feel of a West Coast ridah track, complete with a “Funky Worm” sample. The song first appeared as the B-side of the single for Slaughtahouse’s title track.
Soon after its release, “Born To Roll” took off, with radio stations on the West Coast, Midwest, and down south giving the song major play. Ace recorded a separate video for it that was a huge hit on the call-in request video network The Box, as well as an “adult” version that received play on Uncle Luke’s late night video show. Some subsequent re-pressings of SlaughtaHouse included the track.
The massive success of “Born To Roll” took both Ace and Delicious Vinyl by surprise. In its wake, Delicious Vinyl proposed Ace record an entire album based around “car culture” that would hew close to the sound of “Born To Roll,” wanting him to chase the song’s success. Ace had a good deal of knowledge of cars at the time, so he agreed to do it. He created what he described as “Brooklyn Bass Music.” It still had many of the jazzy trappings of “traditional” East Coast hip-hop but sounded great when played in the car.
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Ace constructed Sittin’ On Chrome around a loose narrative. Though both Take A Look Around and SlaughtaHouse were concept albums of sorts, Sittin’ On Chrome was the first Masta Ace album built around a linear story. It’s a format that he would continue to adopt for the rest of his career.
Through the intro and interludes, he tells the story of one summer where he’s visited by his (fictional) cousin Jerome a.k.a. J-Dog, a loud and brash resident of South Central Los Angeles. The “message” isn’t particularly subtle, as he depicts how the two adapt to each other, with J-Dog quickly acclimating himself to the East Coast lifestyle and making himself quite popular to residents of Ace’s Brooklyn neighborhood.
At the time of Sittin’ On Chrome’s release, hip-hop was somewhat embroiled in the insufferably stupid “East Coast/West Coast” beef. By making an album designed to appeal to the West Coast, Midwest, and southern regions of the country, Ace wasn’t overtly asserting East Coast dominance. Ace has said in numerous interviews that many fans, peers, and Brooklyn residents had already assumed that he’d moved to California, since Delicious Vinyl was located in Los Angeles. Making an album that didn’t pick a side was confounding to some.
In an interview with WatchLOUD in 2015, Ace explained how he worked to give the label what it wanted while still not selling himself out artistically. And as a whole, it worked quite well. Yes, a good chunk of the material on Sittin’ On Chrome sounded considerably different than what he had released on SlaughtaHouse. But much of SlaughtaHouse sounded considerably different than what had appeared on Take A Look Around. Regardless, Ace always sounds like he’s being true to himself.
“The I.N.C. Ride,” Sittin’ On Chrome’s first single, is an example of how the “compromise” with Delicious Vinyl yielded artistically awesome results. Ace flows over a mellow track that he also produced, built from a sample of the Isley Brothers’ “For The Love Of You” and elements of Leon Haywood’s “I Want To Do Something Freaky To You,” describing the various escapes of himself and his crew as they traverse various cities around the country.
It turns out that the single version is actually a remix of the song. The original recorded version of the song was renamed “The Phat Kat Ride,” closing out Sittin’ On Chrome as a bonus cut of sorts (it’s preceded by “Born to Roll”). This version was produced by Louis “Phat Kat” Vega, known for his work with Queen Latifah and the original incarnation of the Flavor Unit. The “Phat Kat” version is a smooth, horny heavy track, and sounds like a more laid-back version of “Jeep Ass N****h.”
While Ace said he loved the original incarnation, Delicious Vinyl requested that he remix it to make it more accessible. The Phat Kat version is really dope and captured the aesthetic of mid-1990s East Coast-based hip-hop. It would have made a perfectly acceptable lead single for Ace’s Slaughtahouse follow-up. Each version delivers a distinct regional flavor and are both individually great recordings.
Sittin’ On Chrome is the second Masta Ace album that’s labelled a “Masta Ace Inc.” endeavor. This initially came from his desire to distance himself from the Masta Ace name after leaving Cold Chillin’—he wanted to ditch the “Ace” moniker entirely, but Delicious Vinyl convinced him to keep it for branding purposes. He instead opted to conceive his albums in a similar way to Dr. Dre’s The Chronic (1992), where numerous artists would make contributions throughout the project.
On SlaughtaHouse, Masta Ace Inc. included Ace (also producing under the alias Ase One), Lord Digga, Paula Perry, and the trio EyceURokk (made up of Eyce, Uneek, and Rokk Diesel). But just as they were beginning to record Sittin’ On Chrome, Eyce and Uneek got well-paying jobs with the local Board of Education, reducing the size of the roster. Ace then brought in R&B singer Leschea, who he had known growing up in Brooklyn.
Though the “Masta Ace Inc.” lineup had been pared down, Digga and Perry each take a larger role in the album. Both are featured prominently throughout Sittin’ On Chrome, each demonstrating their improvement as emcees. The pair are front and center on “The B-Side,” the first song released from the album (It is indeed the B-side of a Delicious Vinyl promo single, paired with Da Wascals’ “Class Clown”). The two join Ace on a dark and sinister romp, dropping wicked verses to another track that samples “I Want To Do Something…”
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Sittin’ On Chrome’s opening stretch reflects the good that can come from “compromises.” Tracks like “Eastbound” and “What’s Going On!” are solid Jeep-oriented tracks. They sound like the type of songs that Ace could have recorded at that point of his career even if he wasn’t trying to replicate the success of “Born To Roll.”
However, a few “compromises” lead Sittin’ On Chrome astray. The title track (and album’s second single) is pretty clunky. Ace describes rolling through the streets of Brooklyn, Digga riding shotgun, looking to get into trouble. Musically, Ace’s attempts to retread the same ground he covered on “Born To Roll” result in diminishing returns, and it’s the album’s weakest entry.
The execution on “Turn It Up,” the album’s third single, is also off. The song is a solo showcase for Leschea, as she celebrates the power of playing loud music loud. But even a use of Roy Ayers’ “Everybody Loves The Sunshine” can’t save the overly bland entry.
Both of the previous songs were later “saved” by their respective remixes, which were available on the associated 12-inches and later reissues of the album. The “Pitkin Ave Mix” of the title track is much more soulful, built around a filtered sample of Ben E. King’s “And This Is Love.” The “Turn It Up” remix is a complete reimagination, as Ace and Paula Perry pass the mic back and forth over a replaying of EPMD’s “Get Off The Bandwagon” remix.
“People In My Hood” would thematically fit in on either Take A Look Around or Slaughtahouse. Over a precisely chopped sample of Al Green’s “Home Again,” Ace narrates the lives and sins of neighborhood residents in intimate detail. “Da Answer” plays like a much better version of the project’s title track, as Ace describes driving through Brooklyn in his black coupe, eventually hitting up a local club to enjoy the drinks and atmosphere. It also features a creative use of Keni Burke’s “Risin’ To The Top” sample.
The second half of the album becomes more of a “traditional” mid-1990s East Coast album. The production is in the boom-bap vein, and the lyrics skew towards skills-oriented battle shit. “U Can’t Find Me” and “Terror” are both banging entries, featuring Ace mixing it up with Digga and Perry. Ace gives the album’s best lyrical performance on “Freestyle?” While Ace doesn’t deliver strictly “off the head” raps, he goes well into free association mode, letting off two excellent verses, at one point exclaiming, “Call me benchwarmer ’cause, n***a, I don't play.”
Though “4 Da Mind” is one of my personal favorite tracks on Sittin’ On Chrome, thematically it’s an anomaly. Here Ace takes a fantastical journey to a vast desert populated by wizened old men surrounded by hip-hop artifacts and a thick book of sacred rhymes. He’s accompanied by Digga and The Cella Dwellas, all of whom deliver clever lines and potent verbal blows. UG of the Brooklyn-based duo promises to “rip out your spine and play the piccolo with your vertebrae.” The Dwellas would use guest appearances like this one and a number of well-received singles to set up the release of their debut Realms ‘N Reality (1996).
Though Sittin’ On Chrome was both an artistic and commercial success (it’s still his best-selling album), Ace has said the project “fits in a weird spot for me, career-wise.” In an interview with WatchLOUD, Ace said it “created issues in my social interaction with my town.” As alluded to earlier, Ace opted to “ride the middle” in the East Coast/West Coast beef, but some began calling him a “West Coast sellout” for recording something that was designed to appeal to audiences in multiple geographic regions.
When Ace appeared on Talib Kweli’s People’s Party podcast, he expanded on his complex feelings about Sittin’ On Chrome. “I still have a little bit of bad taste in my mouth about that project,” he explained. “Because I gave them what they asked for. … But so many things happened with distribution and mistakes and the ball getting dropped here and there.” Despite the album’s relative success, he felt that the label left a lot of money on the table, and he departed Delicious Vinyl soon afterwards, and vowed never to relinquish control of his music moving forward.
In the three decades since the release of Sittin’ On Chrome, Ace has further built his case for being one of hip-hop’s best artists. He has committed to recording narratively deep and complex concept albums and has built one of the all-time great discographies.
I’m not sure if his career would have unfolded the way it has without Sittin’ On Chrome. Yes, it’s an album built from compromise and chasing past success, but it’s an album in which Ace remains true to himself, which became a constant in his career moving forward. He took some chances, learned some lessons, and recorded some enduring music. Compromised or not, Sittin’ On Chrome is an album that contains a lot of greatness.
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