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They were managed by an assertive Manhattan Center student named Damon Dash, but he was really courting L, who was known around town as the best rapper in the borough. They joined a rap crew called Children of the Corn, founded in 1993 by a far more serious Harlem rapper named Big L. Cam was the fire Mase was preternaturally chill.Īs amateur rappers in Harlem going by Killa Cam and Murda Mase, the two immersed themselves in the corner scene, rapping around town at gambling spots and after games at Rucker Park. After leading the basketball team to the PSAL Finals his senior year at Manhattan Center High School, Betha and teammate Cameron Giles had dreams of going to the NBA, but when Betha was forced to repeat his senior year-which meant a year without playing ball-the friends picked up rap as a hobby.
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“I guess from the very beginning I was coming onto the scene before people were ready to see me,” he says in his 2001 pseudo memoir, Revelations: There’s a Light After the Lime. Unscheduled arrivals became a hallmark of his life. The youngest of six children, he was delivered almost two months early in Jacksonville, Florida, and he and his mother fled an abusive father, showing up unannounced to live with an uncle in Harlem. Perhaps that’s why he seemed to do everything on his own time, why he talked slower than the big city rappers he grew up with. Mason Bethea was a New Yorker born in the South. It was the peak of the shiny suit era, sparking the short-lived jiggy rap phenomenon of the late ’90s. Initially seen as a sycophant riding Puff’s coattails, and then as an unworthy successor to Biggie, Mase was nearly defiant in his self-belief: “You don’t like me? Bet against me,” he rapped casually on “Niggaz Wanna Act.” That effortless confidence and poise defines his debut album, Harlem World, one of the best rap albums to be almost shamelessly commercial. Puff, the man who’d brought hip-hop Biggie Smalls, one of its greatest ever rappers, was suddenly being pegged as an arbiter of bad taste, with Mase his steward in flamboyant emptiness. The transformation worked brilliantly and made Mase and Puff arguably more popular than any rappers before them, but it also raised questions about the value of style over substance among a classicist rap community that had just lost two icons to gun violence, the first Tupac Shakur, the other in their own camp. Diddy made me pretty,” Mase joked on a song called “Lookin’ at Me.” The transformation into a flashy ladykiller was Puff’s idea. Now he was nearly nonchalant, rapping about Dolce tube socks and putting his name on blimps. For several years, Betha had been a foot soldier on the insular Harlem rap scene snarling about returning fire in shootouts, infrared beams, and slug-filled foes coughing up blood. 1 single months prior, this was Mase’s coming out party, the official induction of Bad Boy’s next star. This was how Sean “ Puffy” Combs, marketing extraordinaire, formally introduced a rebranded Mason Betha to the world. It is a eulogy and a coronation all at once. As he swaggers through the futuristic Hype Williams-directed music video for 1997’s “ Mo Money, Mo Problems,” histories are being rewritten in real-time the nature of rap as an epic retail commodity is growing. He’s wearing the same diamond-studded Jesus piece the Notorious B.I.G. His rise through an ultramodern wind tunnel feels remarkably symbolic as Kelly Price lip-syncs Diana Ross’ “I’m Coming Out” on a monitor behind him. B-I-G P-O-P-P-A No info for the DEA Federal agents mad ‘cause I'm flagrant Tap my cell and the phone in the basement My team supreme, stay clean Triple beam lyrical dream, I be that Cat you see at all events bent Gats in holsters, girls on shoulders Playboy, I told ya, mere mics to me Bruise too much, I lose too much Step on stage, the girls boo too much I guess it's ‘cause you run with lame dudes too much Me lose my touch? Never that! If I did, ain't no problem to get the gat Where the true players at? Throw your Rolies in the sky Wave 'em side to side and keep your hands high While I give your girl the eye, player, please Lyrically, niggas see B.I.Mase floats skyward wearing golden goggles and a shiny suit that looks like a tricked-out air traffic control vest.