Mellow Man Ace
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Mellow Man Ace is a Latino rapper, best known for the song "Mentirosa" ("Liar" in Spanish). The song took a riff from Carlos Santana's "Evil Ways" as the music, repeated and tweaked to fit the lyrics, which were sung in Spanglish (mixing English and Spanish). "Mentirosa" was the first Spanglish hit record. Mellow Man Ace is the brother of Cypress Hill's Sen Dog. He was born in Cuba in 1967, under the name Ulpiano Sergio Reyes. Ace uses Chicano and Cuban slang in his rhymes. Musically, Ace did a couple of hip house tracks, but mainly hip hop tracks, produced by the likes of Julio G, the Dust Brothers, Def Jef, Tony G and Julio G as well as Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs. Not all of his music mixes Latin and hip hop. His first album contains only one wholly bilingual track, "Mentirosa", and two other tracks that are mainly in Spanish (apart from spoken words in English), all the other tracks were wholly in English. On the second album, there were more bilingual tracks, and even one in English with a Cuban accent. However, on his third album, "From Darkness to the Light", Ace didn't actually mix Spanish and English but kept the languages separate, with only two tracks in Spanish and the rest in English. On "Vengo a cobrar" (2004), Ace returned to mixing the languages.
Mellow Man Ace is considered the "Godfather of Latin Rap", in 2002 he was inducted into the Hip Hop Hall of Fame. One of his crowning achievements was becoming the first Latin Rapper to have a Platinum single (Mentirosa).
Discography
- 1989 Escape from Havana (Capitol)
- 1992 The Brother with Two Tongues (Capitol)
- 2000 From the Darkness to the Light (X-Ray)
- 2004 Vengo a cobrar (Dimelo)