Mase: Double Up : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

On his second (and according to recent interviews, last) album, Bad Boy's dimpled Prince Charming comes back with a predictable collection of richer-than-thou tales of girls, jewels and cars, and woe-is-me lamentations of jealously, back-stabbing and alienation. In trying to distance himself from Puff Daddy, Mase has fallen well short of his former Svengeli's slick standardes -- you can't even dance to Double Up. Mase painstakingly asserts that he's hard, over a bevy of drab pop beats and flimsy thug-core numbers. "Before you judge me, feel my pain," he raps on the melancholy "Same Niggas," but he's neither persuassive nor entertaining. On cuts like "Untouchables" and "You Ain't As Smart As You Think," the ex-pop boy wonder spits Hooked on Phonics death threats, but the real low point is his mo'-money, ho-problems misogyny: "According to my mother / If you wanna know if a girl love ya / All you gotta do is make her suffer," he raps on "Oh Daddy." Double Up gets the thumbs down. (RS 816/817)

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