Mase’s maze

Let’s follow along on modern hip-hop’s most fascinating career trajectory. Mason Betha was:

“In 1997, a shiny suit-wearing sidekick to a pop icon (the man now known as Diddy, if you must know). And later that year, a multi-platinum-selling solo artist.

“In 1999, a born-again Christian who renounced his own second album.

“In 2001, a founder of his own church in Atlanta. The next year he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Theology and started calling himself Dr. Betha.

“ In 2004, still pastor of his own church, but again a hip-hop artist, with a Top 10 comeback album.

And now – sound familiar? – he’s a dark clothes-wearing sidekick to a pop icon. But instead of the squeaky-clean rhymes of his comeback CD “Welcome Back,” he’s tagging along with 50 Cent.

He’s thrown lyrical potshots while joining in the gangsta rapper’s rivalry with The Game, and appears from mixtape songs to again be the crude rapper of his past, Murder Mase.

And yet he’s still a pastor, at his S.A.N.E. (for Saving A Nation Endangered) Church International, in Atlanta. He delivered a sermon last Tuesday and is doing so again today.

How to explain these dual careers in the distinctly separate realms of religion and rap?

Well, to start with, they’re not so separate. Betha embodies the same blend of Christianity and pop-readiness found on Kanye West’s hit “Jesus Walks,” and indeed was featured on that song’s remix. He’s just not as subtle as West.

Nor is he content to start small. Betha had hoped to join his evangelism to his music through “Welcome Back,” on Diddy’s Bad Boy label. It sold 553,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan – not bad, but a far cry from the 3.2 million copies of his debut, “Harlem World.”

The God-loving, pious Mase persona also didn’t sit well with many former colleagues, who accused him of being a hypocrite.

Cam’Ron rapped on the scathing “Take Em to Church” that Mase is a “false prophet, all profit. … What you offering? Put it right in offering. They take it all: Cash, credit, silver, down to porcelain. Look at the Porsche he’s in.”

Disappointed and stung, Mase has at least temporarily separated music from religion. But he suggests he’ll join them again when the time is right – that is, when his entree through 50 Cent’s massive fan base allows a sizable enough audience.

“When people saw the squeaky-clean album they didn’t get it, because it was too far-fetched from the Mase they had previously known,” Betha said before a recent performance in which he acted as 50 Cent’s hype-man.

“Right now, what I’m working on is an album that’ll show you how I got from point A to point B. So what people are hearing now is not me switching. It’s actually taking it back to the beginning of where Mase went from to where he’s going now.”

While Interscope Records has not yet announced a formal deal, Betha said he joined G-Unit after “shopping around for a different deal from Bad Boy. It was time for me to grow as an artist, it was time for me to do what I actually came to do.

“And what I actually came to do I can’t really explain. It’ll make 100 percent sense in the end,” he adds.

“This is the second phase of the plan. When it’s all finished it’ll make 100 percent sense and you’ll say ‘Wow, this guy’s a genius.’ “