Mellow Man Ace

Mellow Man Ace (born Ulpiano Sergio Reyes in 1967) is an Afro-Cuban rapper. Born in Pinar del Rio, Cuba, and raised in South Gate, California Mellow Man is best known for the song "Mentirosa" ("Liar" in 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 Ace himself, B Real came up with the "Check this out baby" line in the track. Mellow Man Ace is the brother of Cypress Hill's Sen Dog. Ace uses Cuban slang in his rhymes. Musically, Ace 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 Baker Boyz, Johnny Rivers, Tony G (producer) as well as Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs and Ace 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 Ace himself, Ace didn't actually 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), Ace returned to mixing the languages, with Bronek producing the whole album. Mellow Man Ace is considered the "Godfather of Latin Rap", in 2002 he was inducted into the Hip Hop Hall of Fame. "Mentirosa" was the first platinum single by a Latin rapper, and "Mas pingón" was the first all-Spanish rap single. Originally a member of Cypress Hill before going solo and releasing his album prior to the group's debut, Mellow Man has teamed up with older brother Sen Dog of Cypress Hill to release a duo album under the group name The Reyes Brothers." Although Mellow Man has guest featured on Cypress Hill albums, this will mark the first collaborative LP effort between the brothers, with their album "Ghetto Therapy" slated for a June 13 2006 release on Latin Thug Records.