It was the summer of 1994, and Jim Carrey was the funniest man on the planet. My friends and I spent the first half of ‘94 imitating Ace Ventura every chance we got, so when his new movie The Mask was set to come out in July, we were fired up. Crazy to think that Dumb & Dumber would come out later that same year, too. 

Of the three movies Carrey starred in through 1994, The Mask is easily the weakest and also my least favorite. Even back then, I wasn’t that into it. But Jim Carrey’s character’s name—Stanley Ipkiss—that name would end up being attached to me in a way I could have never predicted. 

The summer of ‘94 was already a special one for me. Just days before the release of The Mask, I got my drivers license, so I was spending my days enjoying the new found freedom of being able to drive myself and my friends wherever we wanted to go. And if we weren’t riding around town doing day-to-day shit like play ball and eat pizza, we were driving to some sort of record store in the 914 or the Bronx to shop for the latest rap CDs, mixtapes, and 12 inches. After all, it was 1994, and hip-hop was hotter than ever.

That summer was also when I started writing rhymes for the first time. I had a job working the desk at the local Gedney Way tennis courts, and I would sit there writing my first bars in a notebook while I listened to Hot 97 on the shitty little radio they had in the office. In fact, the first song I wrote was about my first car—-“I got the jim hats for sex in the Civic DX.” What can I say, we were always taught in health class to be prepared!

Which brings me back to The Mask. At the time, I would rap under the name D-Nice. Of course, there was already a well-known rapper named D-Nice, and I was a fan of his. “25 Ta Life” was my shit. It didn’t really matter to me though. I was just fucking around, I wasn’t taking it seriously. And it was a nickname I had for a few years, well before I ever picked up a pen to write a rhyme. 

But then something happened. We were playing basketball in my neighbor’s driveway after going to see The Mask in the theater. We used to do this thing where if someone did something well that deserved props, like make a crazy fadeaway 3-pointer, we’d sarcastically yell, “Yes Dan!” You got your props, but you kinda got played in the process, too. Well, “Yes Dan!” got purposely slurred into “‘s’Dan!” which somehow cleverly turned into “Stanley Ipkiss!” Credit is due to my boy Chris for dropping it first. 

Needless to say, we all cracked up at the timely, witty reference to The Mask. But for some reason, unlike the many other cracks and snaps amongst my friends that had nicknames attached to them, this one stuck. And months later, my boys were still calling me Stanley Ipkiss. (Fun fact: Stanley Ipkiss also drove a Civic in The Mask—how crazy is that?)

Well, months later, I was also writing raps much more frequently. And I started dropping my newly-given nickname in rhymes. But for whatever reason, when I wrote it in my rhymes, I spelled it differently. At the time, I didn’t know the spelling, I only knew the name from seeing the movie in the theater. It wasn’t until The Mask came out for rental and I read the back of the VHS box that I realized I had been spelling it wrong. But I liked the way Ipcus looked so I just kept writing it like that, with a C – U – S instead of a K – I – S – S after the I – P. 

The first tape of myself I made was basically just me rapping over different popular hip-hop instrumentals I had on vinyl. There were no actual songs or hooks or titles. And at the time, I was still calling myself D-Nice but dropping the Stanley Ipcus alias here and there in my raps. This was 1996 when I was a senior in high school, and I made an updated version when I went away to college titled Hanukah Hold Up, a flip of DJ Clue’s mixtape Holiday Hold Up. 

But by early 1999, when I released my first proper album Pu Click Poetry, the D-Nice name was long gone, and Stanley Ipcus was now my official rap moniker. And somewhere along the way, I started going by just Stan Ipcus. It was less nerdy sounding, and I didn’t want anyone thinking this shit was a joke.

Now in 2024, 30 years since I was christened by my friend Chris with the Ipcus nickname, I’m still at it. Hard to believe, since I stepped away from the mic a bunch of times during my adult life, mostly to work and start a family and explore other creative interests. 

But after the release of easily my most ambitious and notable non-Ipcus creative endeavor, the Rizzoli-published book Do Remember! The Golden Era of NYC Hip-Hop Mixtapes that I co-authored with my boy Ev Boogie, I had the itch to get back to the mic. Which leads me to The Mask Tape. 

At the beginning process of recording this next Stan Ipcus album, I found myself getting warmed up like I’ve done so many times in the past when I’m starting a new project, which is digging for loops. Usually, I’ll make a folder with a bunch of instrumental loops, and then start going in one-by-one. Which is exactly what I did during the last couple months of 2023 after Do Remember! dropped in October. 

But by January of this year, I unexpectedly started making some great connections with producers who were interested in working with me, and suddenly, I was consistently getting album-worthy beats sent to me by multiple producers. And it put me in a truly crazy zone. I was as inspired as I’d ever been to write songs, especially knowing I was working toward making a proper album. I would get a beat l liked sent to me, and within 24 hours I’d have a full song written and sometimes even recorded, hooks and all. 

By the first week of April, the new Stan Ipcus album was fully recorded. 10 songs with four different producers, including one self-produced joint I had from the end of December. But I still had a few joints laying around that I had done from the end of 2023 that were dope, but they weren’t album-worthy. They were over really recognizable loops or other artist’s beats, and they had more of a mixtape feel to them. 

So when I connected with the legendary Tape Kingz label about releasing my new album on vinyl, a relationship I had formed during my work on Do Remember!, I approached them with an additional idea. “What if we dropped a limited edition Stan Ipcus and Tape Kingz mixtape on cassette before the album?” In my mind, this would harken back to the days when artists like Jadakiss and Kanye West would drop a mixtape before they released their new LPs as a way to warm up the streets for what was to come. 

I didn’t exactly have a full mixtape worth of brand new non-album material, but I did have a bunch of new shit and some recent and older Ipcus shit I thought would make for a dope listening experience for day one and new Stan Ipcus fans alike. And when I looked at the calendar and saw that the 30th anniversary of The Mask was July 29th, 2024, just about a month shy of when we were planning to put out the album, the light bulb above my head lit up. The Mask Tape. I mean come on, what better way to connect Stan Ipcus and Tape Kingz after the release of Do Remember! Especially since we had a page dedicated to mixtapes that flipped movies and TV show artwork.

So here it is. A prelude to the new Stan Ipcus album and an ode to my rap beginnings 30 years ago, mixed by my boy United Crates in classic mixtape fashion with a bangin’ intro, blends, skits from the movie, freestyles, exclusives, unreleased demos, and so much more. 

Shout to my boy Marc Borelli who laced the artwork. Stream The Mask Tape below and cop the Tape Kingz limited edition green cassette HERE.

Stay tuned for the new Stan Ipcus album Sleep If You Want dropping soon on Tape Kingz vinyl and cassette!