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.
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