Royalty Magazine: What's good? How's life treating you?
Masta Ace: Not bad. New record out. I'm running around promoting that. Football season, which is always great. Big football fan. Coaching, getting ready for the NFL season. Enjoying my family summer. That's about it.
Royalty Magazine: Well 2012 crept in, out and is damn near gone! What are some of your greatest accomplishments or memories from this year? Tell us one thing that you will do differently next year than you did this year?
Masta Ace: A big accomplishment for me is finally getting this Doom record out. It's been over a year of planning it and talking about it coming out. That was definitely one of the big accomplishments this year. The other two big accomplishments this year was the tour I did through Canada in March and the tour through Europe in April. I did twenty-two shows in Canada for March and twenty-three or twenty-four shows in Europe for May. Those were two major one month long tours to help set up the release of this record. As far as doing anything diffferently, I don't know if there's much I'd do differently. I liked how things laid out. One month on tour then a month home then back on tour. After that the rest of the summer was spent with my family. That was pretty much a good schedule for me.
Royalty Magazine: Speaking of next year...what can we expect to hear or see from you in 2013? Any upcoming projects, tours or tracks we should be checking for? What's good with EMC?
Masta Ace: I have the re-release of my fourth album Disposable Arts. It came out in 2001 and we're doing the decade anniversary edition. It's being packaged as a collector's edition vinyl box set including three pieces of vinyl, instrumentals and acappellas, a couple songs reworked with a live band, exclusive artwork & photos, and a documentary chronicling the making of the record. All of those things will be packaged into that box set for the fans. We'll also be releasing the original for those who can't afford the box set.
As far as EMC goes, we'd like to do another record but we have to get our ducks in a row. We all live in different states and the thing that made the last record great was that we were all in the studio at the same time working. We don't want to do it over email. There has to be a time where we can get together and make a nice record. Otherwise it's not worth doing.
Royalty Magazine: What projects are you working on now? Tell us more about the MA_Doom project? Who is involved in it and how did the idea for the project come about? How can people cop it?
Masta Ace: It came about because I got my hands on some MF Doom instrumentals, his Special Herbs instrumental series. I got my hands on those and I drove with them for about a month. As I drove with them I started formulating some ideas for songs. It was that point I decided I wanted to do a mixtape, a free mixtape and release to the fans. It was at that point Phat Beatz Records got involved, they heard about the project. They felt like it should be more of a commercial release so they put up the finances to make it an official commercial release. I went in the studio and put together a cohesive record that has a theme and this was