Juice Crew cat Masta Ace is teaming up with DOOM for a new joint LP.

The album, following the same pattern as DOOM’s Dangerdoom and JJ DOOM releases, will be titled MA DOOM: Son Of Yvonne. The veteran Queens MC is on vocal duty, whilst DOOM provides the beats. Each of the backing tracks is plucked from DOOM’s Special Herbs series of instrumentals, released across ten volumes from 2001-2005. The project has been good to go for about six months now, but ‘Slow Down’ is the first featured track to trickle out onto the web.

‘Slow Down’, spotted over at 2 Dope Boyz, is a tranquil cut. Over a wandering bassline and exotic flute trills, Masta Ace bobs and weaves. Despite the good time bounce, the lyrics are deceptively macabre: Ace talks about being roofied and mugged (“Next thing I know I’m laying on the floor/And feels like they hit me in the head with a few bricks”).

The perennially delayed MA DOOM is allegedly due in ‘summer’. ‘Slow Down’ is a lot of fun, but it would be great if Ace could jimmy things along a tad.

Joseph Morpurgo