“Don’t leave when you’re hot, that’s how Mase screwed up.”
We all remember that famous line from Ye’s (formerly Kanye West)= “Devil in a New Dress” — a line he has since apologized for — and on Wednesday (March 5), the Harlem rapper talked about his meteoric rise after he signed to Bad Boy.
During an episode of his sports talk show It Is What It Is, co-host Trysta Krick asked Mase what was the first moment in his rap career that gave him confidence during a conversation about athletes becoming more confident after winning a championship. “For me it was instant,” he answered. “I worked so hard behind the scenes that when I did hit the scene, it was instant. To people, it looked like it happened overnight.”
He then recalled a moment when he went to check out a Junior M.A.F.I.A. show at Nassau Coliseum with a friend and couldn’t get in. “That moment lit a fire in my belly,” he said. “A year later, I just started working on my flow, working on my bars, working on my delivery, and I worked on it for like six months. I studied people like Method Man. I studied people like LL. I got my waves from Nas. I got my bounce from Method Man. I got my songwriting from LL.”
However, it wasn’t until The Notorious B.I.G. decided to let him hit the stage during a show at the Apollo that he really took off. “And then one day, he was performing at the Apollo and he brought me out and that was the part that changed everything,” he remembered. “What else can you be solidified by other than the greatest rapper ever to bring you out on stage and say that you’re the next one? And once he said I was the next one, I never looked back. I got better every day. I got better on every song. Every freestyle was great. It was like I couldn’t miss for like two years straight. Anything I got on was just gone. It was nonstop.”
He added: “My hand was hotter than probably Drake‘s. I’m not gonna lie to you. I mean from the beginning. Now Drake has had a way better career, did major things, but I’m saying, my initial start was hotter than Drake’s.”
Mase started his rap career as a member of Harlem rap group Children of the Corn alongside the late Big L, Cam’ron, Herb McGruff, the late Bloodshed and producer Six Figga Digga. He made his Bad Boy debut on 112‘s “Only You (Remix)” and his debut Harlem World sold 273,000 copies in its first week and is certified four times platinum.
Watch the full episode of It Is What It Is below.
