Mellow Man Ace

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Ulpiano Sergio Reyes (born April 12, 1967, South Gate, California) is a American rapper known as Mellow Man Ace and original member of the rap group, Cypress Hill.

Biography

Reyes is best known for the song "Mentirosa" (translated as "liar" from Spanish). The song took a riff from Carlos Santana's "Evil Ways" as the music, repeated and tweaked to fit the lyrics, which were sung in Spanglish (mixing English and Spanish). "Mentirosa" was the first Spanglish hit record. According to Reyes himself, B-Real came up with the "Check this out baby" line in the track. Reyes is the younger brother of Cypress Hill's Sen Dog and frequently utilizes Cuban slang in his rhymes. Musically, Reyes did a couple of hip house tracks, but mainly hip hop tracks, produced by the likes of Julio G, the Dust Brothers, Def Jef, the Baka Boyz, Johnny Rivers, Tony G (producer) as well as Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs, and himself. Not all of his music mixes Latin and hip hop. His first album contains only one wholly bilingual track, "Mentirosa", but all in all, about half of the tracks include Spanish lyrics. On the second album, which was produced by Bronek Wroblewski, Julio G, DJ Muggs, Ralph Medrano, and Tony G, about half of the tracks were in Spanish or contained Spanish lyrics; one song was in English with a Cuban accent. However, on his third album, From Darkness to the Light, produced by the Collective Funkateerz, DJ Muggs, Cuban, and Tony G as well as himself, Reyes did not mix Spanish and English but kept the languages separate, with only two tracks in Spanish and the rest in English. On Vengo a Cobrar (2004), Reyes returned to mixing the languages, with Bronek producing the whole album.

Originally a member of Cypress Hill before going solo and releasing his album prior to the group's debut, Reyes teamed with his brother Sen Dog to release a duo album as The Reyes Brothers. Although he has guest featured on Cypress Hill albums, this marks the first collaborative LP effort between the two brothers, with their album Ghetto Therapy released on October 3, 2006 on Latin Thug Records. In 2007 Mellow Man Ace started his, Mellow Man Ace Presents: La Familia Vol 1. The project was designed to help up and coming artist from all over the globe, including Spain, Chile, Netherlands, Canada, as well as across the US. Mellow does a track with each artist and also gives them knowledge of writing, rapping and the music business. Mellow also gives the artists distribution deals on Latin Thug Records/E1 (formerly Koch). The project has grown to an upcoming release of a double cd of Vol 2 & 3. The release date is set for late 2009. The project has grown into an extended family and they have annual bar-b-q's.

Discography

• 1989: Escape from Havana (Capitol)
• 1992: The Brother with Two Tongues (Capitol)
• 2000: From the Darkness Into the Light (X-Ray)
• 2004: Vengo a Cobrar (Dimelo)
• 2006: Ghetto Therapy (Latin Thug) (with Sen Dog, as The Reyes Brothers)
• 2008: Mellow Man Ace Presents La Familia Compilation Vol 1 (Latin Thug)

Filmography

• Heroes of Latin Hip Hop (dir. Fred Sherman, 2002)

See also

• Afro-Latinos

External links

• Official website·website is under construction - contact Mellow Man Ace at myspace/mellowmanacelt
• Mellow Man Ace Exclusive Interview on Dubcnn
• Mellow Man Ace interview