Kanye West blasting the music industry earlier this week caught the attention of rapper Ma$e, who accused him of making fun of his decision to leave rap music for ministry years ago.
West began criticizing the music industry by blasting companies Universal and Sony for not letting him buy his master recordings from them. He then asked J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, and Drake for a meeting, seemingly to find a way to change how artists are signed.
Ma$e responded to West’s message Friday, Sept. 18, on Instagram and brought up his 2010 song “Devil in a New Dress.”
“Don’t leave while you’re hot that’s how Mase screwed up … Maybe I should call Ma$e so he could pray for us,” rapped West.
“What you are feeling has been expressed before,” Ma$e wrote on Instagram about West’s feelings about the music industry. “But when I was saying it, the same system and mindset that you are fighting against today, used you to shame me for leaving the very same system! #Remember, your famous line ‘Don’t leave when you hot?'”
“I know today you may see it very differently,” he added. “So you owe me (and my family) a public #apology and then some, if anyone owes you one. For alluding to the fact that me following God at the height of my career was a bad decision.”
West hasn’t retired from making music but his career has taken a similar path, announcing last year that he was done making secular songs after becoming a born-again Christian. He’s also been holding church-like events called “Sunday Service” after his spiritual conversion, and Ma$e seems to think he’s a hypocrite.
West responded to the New York native Sunday, Sept. 20, on Twitter and expressed regret about the “Devil in a Blue Dress” line.
“Ma$e is right about that line,” he wrote. I always felt funny about that line … Ma$e is one of my favorite rappers and I based a lot of my flows off of him … I’m the king of ‘ooh can I get away with this bars,’ so I reap what I sow when the next generation does the same to me.”
Ma$e has taken the music industry to task before, most recently in January of this year when he accused Sean “Diddy” Combs, who signed him to Bad Boy Records in the ’90s, of trapping him in a bad record deal as a youngster.
That deal could have played a part in Ma$e’s 1999 retirement, which he announced in a phone call with Hot 97’s Funkmaster Flex.
“I gotta do what makes me happy,” Ma$e said then. “A lot of people gonna say I’m crazy. I’m leaving money behind and a lot of things but it’s just how I feel in my heart. Once God puts something in your heart, you know, God talks to everyone different.”
After becoming a minister and preaching at Atlanta’s El Elyon International Church, Ma$e returned to music with his 2004 LP “Welcome Back” but would never recapture the success he had before retiring, which West brought up on “Devil in a New Dress.”
Many left comments under Ma$e’s post and some didn’t think he should’ve asked for an apology.
“Bruh it’s all good. Let the past go fam,” one person wrote. “God knows the truth you did your thang. It ain’t genuine when you ask for it anyway.”
“So you gonna just skip over that a few bars later he said ‘maybe I should call mase so he can pray for us?'” someone asked. “He wasn’t throwing a shot. He said what we all was thinking.”
After blasting Universal and Sony, West shared all of his music contracts on Twitter to show people what they entail. He also urinated on a Grammy statue that he received.
