WELCOME BACK [MASE]

After years as Puff Daddy's main protege, Mase exploded to the pinnacle of hip-hop success with the multi-platinum albums HARLEM WORLD (1997) and DOUBLE UP (1999). Then, as swiftly as he achieved that fame, he gave it all up, announcing his retirement from the rap game to enter the ministry. While many wrote it off as a passing fancy, he stuck with it for five years, until his desire to make music could apparently be suppressed no longer, and he emerged with his third record, WELCOME BACK.

On the title track, Mase reworks a line from the classic WELCOME BACK, KOTTER theme song--"the game has all changed since I've been around"--which is impossible to debate in the ever-changing rap world, but Mase himself hasn't changed. He's still the easy-flowing, affable MC he was before the gospel grabbed him. He can still pin a clever rhyme on a catchy hook, as he does by incorporating Madonna's "La Isla Bonita" on "My Harlem Lullaby," or flex his muscles around a tender ballad as on "I Wanna Go." WELCOME BACK may follow five years of silence, but it sounds as if he never left.