Ulpiano Sergio "Mellow Man Ace" Reyes is a Cuban-American rapper born in Pinar del Rio, Cuba. When he was still a child, his family moved with him to Los Angeles, then to South Gate, California. In 1987, he signs with Delicious Vinyl and releases his debut single "Do This". The next season, the emcee gets a contract with Capitol, being the first rapper to release a solo Latin hip hop album.
The production is realized by The Dust Brothers, Tony G., Grandmixer Muggs, Def Jef and the two founders of Delicious Vinyl Matt Dike and Michael Ross. David Fitzpatrick plays the keyboards. The managers of Mellow Man Ace are Morey Alexander and Jerry Heller. It combines tracks in English and tracks in Spanish, also mixes the two languages in the first Spanglish cuts: "Mentirosa" is nothing exceptional, absolutely nothing, but Mellow Man places a few of English and a few of Spanish in it (props to him to know both languages enough to be able to spit fluently well) and people go crazy: when he emerges from the West Coast scene as a Latin rapper in 1989, he's hailed as a sort of new messiah.
Nobody has ever seen someone rapping in Spanish, let alone mix Spanish and English ("Mentirosa" immediately jumps towards the gold record and breaches the top 100): critics at the time had not heard basically anyone rapping in Spanish, they probably believed that "Spanish" was a new type of ice cream and not a language different by English. The producers do a fairly decent job, providing simple rhythm with West Coast flavors and good samples (Santana, James Brown, Kool and theGang, Sly and the Family Stone, the Isley Brothers, Chaka Khan, Michael Jackson, Maceo), while Mellow Man Ace does very little between lyrics and delivery and gives his best in the numerous and annoying ballads, which are almost everywhere: good Latin pop record, mediocre hip hop record.
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