Double Up
These are the things you need to know aboutDouble Up, Mase's sophomore effort. "Stay Out of My Way" samplesMadonnaandPublic Enemy; "Get Ready" rides a interpolation of Shalamar's"Night to Remember"(curiously nothing is heard from the Temptations' classic"Get Ready"); "Make Me Cry" samplesFleetwood MacandNatalie Cole. And so on. Yeah baby,Puff Daddytaught his protégé well. Like his mentor, Mase is not a preposessing rapper, and his monotone can become rather wearying since he rarely changes cadences. His rhymes are pedestrian at best--he rhymes "Lewinsky" with "convince me," but he's not talking politics.  Still, this is a good party or hip-hop dance-class album; the production is razor sharp and the samples are well chosen. Unlike most hip-hop that demands to be foreground, Mase makes music that is perfectly content to be pleasant, lightly funky background music.--Martin Johnson