Treach put it bluntly: "If you ain't from the ghetto, don't come to the ghetto." Yet suburban white teens, the core of hip-hop's buyer base, draw their experiences with the state-sponsored segregation and degradation of the ghetto from their iPods and Discmans on their way to school. Hip-hop album liner notes and the pages of XXL serve as a proxy for those who can't face the ghetto first-hand. So when a fresh MC dons the griot's cloak and translates his world for public consumption, the gap that once separated millions of the Black and Latino poor, and their scores of campaigners and admirers, is lifted-- if only for a momentary spin of the vinyl.
As the last member of the legendary J.U.I.C.E. crew, Masta Ace's ability to translate his life into hip-hop should come as no surprise. 15 years of paddling in the backwater of the rap industry (and utterly smoking Boogieman on "Acknowledge" along the way) has given Ace the fatherly insight of a veteran. While 2001's Disposable Arts brought Ace a new generation that was weaned on "Sittin' on Chrome", A Long Hot Summer is a lesson for tykes who don't remember when MC were cultural messengers.
Unfortunately, A Long Hot Summer starts slowly. In fact, when you cop this album, do yourself a favor and skip the first five tracks. One of the many hip-hop traditions that Ace continues here is inconsistency, and it's unfortunate that the worst work on the album arrives first. Chicago's Dug Infinite offers up a yawner in "Big City" and Ace comes off lazy, like he let Urban Outfitters' Hip-Hoptionary ghostwrite his verses: "This ain't America, is it?/ It don't take much for the cops to pay you a visit/ But do what you gotta do, fuck them laws/ Life is a test, you better up them scores." Even 9th Wonder's patented soul sounds awkward on "Good Ol' Love", with Ace again delivering mediocre phrases like the ironic, "Y'all think I'm washed up like I got in the tub."
Despite its unpolished beginning, the album bounces back with "Beautiful". Producer Koolade's elegant claps and weeping keys set the perfect backdrop for Ace to paint Brooklyn with a golden veneer. For the first time on A Long Hot Summer, Masta Ace invokes the honesty that made Disposable Arts so likeable: "The most beautifulest thing ever/ And it's here to bring terror to the bling-era/ You can feel it in your inna'/ It's like Grandma's house, Thanksgiving Dinner." On "F.A.Y.", Ace immediately counterposes his romance with Brooklyn with the disdain and nihilism of a struggling MC, as he and Strick provide a laundry list of complaints about their inequitable conditions from tax collectors and sheisty label execs to sloppy girlfriends who fart in their sleep: "To all you mean creditors and magazine editors/ Same ones that debted us and put niggas ahead of us/ I'm a mad dog who sits in the dark/ I'm fixin' to bark, watching 106 & Park."
Moreover, Ace does establish his ability as a capable MC. In a late attempt to counteract the average flows on the album's opening, Ace parades his lyrical feathers on "Soap and Soda". (Check: "I just got home as the Sunkist the sky," or, "I just grab my wife and we lay and Snuggle/ We talk about how one day we gonna sail on the Tide and get Wisked away.")
Surprisingly, the bane of random play (aka the skits) pulls the album together thematically. Rather than wasting time with phone calls from friends or snippets of orgiastic female moans, Ace weaves the story of his relationship with the fictional hustler Fats Belvedere. The contrast of Masta Ace's dedication with Fats' unscrupulous money-chasing provides a glimpse of Ace within his Brooklyn context. While Fats may earn more money than Ace could earn in a lifetime, it's Ace's devotion to the art that Fats respects and ultimately what strengthens their friendship. In spite of the a world pitted against both of them, they find solace in hip-hop's bosom. (A legitimate motif on a hip-hop album? Tell De La Soul. Holy shit.)
A Long Hot Summer merely extrapolates from Fats and Ace's relationship as Ace speaks with an earnestness and conviction about his life that gives his work credibility. As the album title and the cover both suggest through their allusions to Spike Lee's Brooklyn of Do the Right Thing, Ace both complicates and develops his character and hometown as sites of hope and confliction.
