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Back With The Killah... Again [PICS]

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Regrettable Juvenilia

12:03 / 27.01.06

I know Barbelith loves Ghostface Killah. As in, he's broadly popular, and there are a few people who really, really love him. Well, he's got a new album coming out in March, his fifth solo LP. I've not heard a single bar of it yet, but if the Comics and Film/TV fora can have threads anticipating things, so can Music! Plus, Ghost would have to seriously drop off in quality for this album not be worth buying (he's never made an album that didn't have something to recommend it). And as ever, the cover is fantastic:

What else? Oh yeah, he has his own doll:

I mean, it doesn't look great, but just the fact that he has one, you know?

What else? There's the album/DVD he just put out with Trifa Da God, called Put It On The Line - not heard it yet, Seth recommends it, that'll do for me, I'll have to try and pick that up this weekend.

What else? Oh, he's got a whole other album coming out with MF Doom, and MF Doom has produced a few beats for FishScale and apparently rhymes on it too. Read more about it in this interview. I know Lithers go nuts for Doom round here. Check out the interview, 'cos he answers the question Ghost once posed, "Why did Judas rat to the Romans while Jesus slept?" - it's a very Seven Soldiers answer.

What else? Oh yeah, Ghost's putting the mask back on:

Is it true you’re putting the mask back on?
Yeah, I’m putting the mask back on. Take the kids back for a little. Take them on a little memory, you know, boom.

What else?

BOOM.

lord nuneaton savage

14:07 / 27.01.06

I have a feeling I'm going to get really excited about this actually, as I've just been catching up with Wu solo albums and Ghostface's are definitely the best (apart from the mighty favourite Liqid Swords, obviously).

Also the Dangerdoom album was a double helping of fun on the run.

It's gonna be a doozer.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:44 / 27.01.06

Yeah, reckon I'll be buying this one too.

21:57 / 27.01.06

Aaargh the prospect of Ghost rapping on MF Doom beats leaves me completely cold. Even though I love Ghost, I expect to be disappointed by the album, which looks on paper like a full-on tilt towards the backpacker demographic. Is Kilos the first single? It's really good, with a hell cute 'explaining the metric system' hook.

Regrettable Juvenilia

22:22 / 27.01.06

It sounds like you know more about it than I do, Crunch, 'cos I havem't seen a tracklisting before today... Anyway, given the possible meanings of the album title and some of the song titles, I don't think he's going "backpack", PLUS having heard 'Hideyaface' I kinda wonder if that would even matter. Man can rhymes over anything.

Regrettable Juvenilia

22:39 / 27.01.06

Urgh, please forgive the bad spelling and shit in that post, I need to sleep, but instead I have been tracking down some sneak previews of this album - check out Spine Magazine which is a great hip-hop resource, has new Nas and Mobb Deep* tracks too for all my '96 -for-ever kids. I've now heard some of 'Big Girl' and 'Charlie Brown' (like a solo 'Gravel Pit' without the chorus) and all of 'Back Like That', which I think is the single - could not be further from backpack if it tried, Crunch, big r&b hook from Ne-Yo.

What else, what else.

Oh yeah, how about a photo of Ghostface dressed as Sherlock Holmes?

Boom. (From FVK, where you can find more, including Starks and some seals.)

*'Put Them In They Place' is sick, might have to put that up somewhere.

06:17 / 28.01.06

That tracklist is different than the one I remember seeing - which had Madlib and poss. other people who annoy me on it too. Still, a half-dozen Doom cuts is dragging my expectations towards the gutter, which in some ways I am glad about it, since it makes it more likely I will be pleasantly surprised, but on the other hand, I think I prefer to be disappointed by albums I'm bugfuck excited about (cf. Trill). I am downloading Back Like That right now so I can make a more informed contribution to this thread. Meanwhile can I slightly derail this thread to say that the Jay-dissing, recently-shot, movie-starring Cam'ron is way more likely to PWN the year than Ghost.

09:30 / 28.01.06

Dunno, Charlie Brown has a very old school feel to me. I recognise the break from somewhere, can't remember what it is. Can anyone identify it - sound like Barry White to me, but I'm sure it isn't (arrgh, poor recall - so annoying!!).

Seems to continue the theme from of last album of rapping over straight over relatively unaltered old school breaks (i.e. Esther William's "Last Night Changed It All"). Defintely a nod to the Spine Magazine reading fraternity there, I think.

13:29 / 28.01.06

I've picked up the odd Ghostface track here and there and enjoyed them thoroughly, however I'm not sure which of his albums I should get. Any suggestions?

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:28 / 28.01.06

Supreme Clientel is generally agreed to be the best, and it's my favourite too. As mentioned in the interview linkted to above, it's the one on which his lyrics are most unpredictable and idiosyncratic and out-there - add lush beats to that and you've got an excellent, very consistent rap album. But you can't go wrong with either Ironman (more like early Wu-Tang) or The Pretty Toney Album (soulful in places, tough in others).

15:51 / 28.01.06

Cheers. I shall try to check them out.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:26 / 28.01.06

IronMan's my favourite- as Fly says, it's the most Wu-Tangy.

Regrettable Juvenilia

23:42 / 05.02.06

I can now report that the Ghostface/Trifa Da God album, Put It On The Line, is great - it stands up in its own right, not just as a stop-gap. This is partly because Trifa is a pretty good rapper in his own right - he holds his own on solo joints such as the title track, 'Hustle Hard' and 'Game Time'.

If you go here you can hear one my favourite tracks from the album, 'Fire', although I'm not sure for how much longer because YouSendIt confuses me sometimes. Anyway, it's built around a sample from a cover of 'Play With Fire' by the Rolling Stones, which has always been one of my favourite Stones songs (I don't recognise the artist), and it features what might be my new favourite Ghost verse.

The other great thing about Put It On The Line is that it features both 'The Watch' and 'The Sun' as bonus tracks. Both of these were planned to be on Bulletproof Wallets but not included in the final tracklisting, and that album suffered as a result. If you have never heard 'The Sun' before, please please please do yourself a favour and try to find it one way or another. It features Raekwon, Ghost, Slick Rick and (very briefly) RZA rapping about the sun and how great it is - seriously, it's three and a bit verses of sun worship, from the cosmic to the mundane, all over an appropriately radiant groove. A great lost classic.

Haus of Mystery

12:52 / 06.02.06

Trife's a fucking excellent rapper IMO - he just doesn't have Ghost's bizarro imagination. They compliment each other very nicely.

Re: DPC's worries about the Doom beats - I thought 'Holla' and 'Save Me Dear' were spiritual cousins to Doom's Soul heavy beats and both were produced by Ghost himself. I think Ghost and Doom come at music from a similar place.
Also: Backpacker angst - please can we move off this? Doom was in KMD, part of the whole native Tongues collective. He's no more or less 'backpacker' than Ghostface. He's not just the indie-hop poster boy, but someone who retreated from mainstream music due to a) being fucked over royally by his label and b) becuase his brother and rapping partner Sub Roc died in a car crash.

That said, naturally very psyched over the new album. as long as he promises to do lots of his special singing.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:51 / 21.02.06

A preview report on Fishscale, described as "Ghost's most aggressively weird album since Supreme Clientele". This may be of interest:

The entire Wu-Tang Clan appears altogether on one song, the apocalyptic banger "Nine Milli Brothers," all of them getting a couple of bars (including a posthumous ODB), and all of them sounding great. An uncharacteristically low-key Raekwon shows up on a few tracks, as does a wildly reanimated Cappadonna ("AKA the cabdriver" he says at one point) and a quickly improving Trife. Ghost's son SG, who rapped a bit at Ghost's October BB King's show, gets a verse; he sounds like an average young NY mixtape rapper, which is more than anyone could've expected.

For more on Cappadonna-as-cabdriver (in Baltimore, no less!), see here.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Barbelith music forum.

Haus of Mystery

12:45 / 21.02.06

The fact that Cap became a cab driver makes me forgive his often piss-poor rhyming.

"Yeah man I used to be in the Wu-Tang Clan"

"Yeah, yeah."

"IT'S TRUE! I was the tenth member!"

"Whatever. Everyone knows there's nine of 'em."

13:59 / 21.02.06

I like Cappa; he's as good as U-God, at any rate. But he is not 'the ODB of this shit'.

Look forward to FishScale immensely.

Haus of Mystery

14:17 / 21.02.06

Cap can throw out good verses, especially on 'Ironman', or recently on 'Pass the Mic' off the Theodore Unit album, but he can derail a song with his clunking sometimes. Much like the RZA can. It's about adapting the flow to the beat, something they both fall foul of sometimes IMO.

Also:
See that 'Supreme Clientele' got HHC's 2nd best album of the last 10 years this month. 1st? Raekwon's 'Only Built...' Yay!

18:26 / 18.03.06

As several Barbeloids have noted that Ghostface regularly raps about food, I offer this: Fish and Grits.

Just about a week till Fishscale.

10:58 / 19.03.06

"[Pointing to the faucet] That’s the best water right there, G. [To his manager] He don’t know nothing about that, [back to Vice] you don’t know about tap water, man. Before bottled water was out, man, tap water was all you got. It’s in the hood, man, you run in the bathroom and that shit be cold as shit. Drink it right out the shit, fuck a cup, you know what I mean? But that’s how it is, G. "

Brilliant. My favourite Ghost food bit is the skit at the start of Pretty Toney: "I asked for a banana nutriment. I wrote it - I wrote it on the muthafuckin paper" then it segues into 'Biscuits'. That's the shit, right there.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

11:04 / 19.03.06

YOU AIN'T BEEN HUNGRY SINCE SUPREME CLIENTELE

08:35 / 20.03.06

This is the best hip hop album I've heard in years. So many moments where I've found myself grinning, or with my mouth open in astonishment, or cheering, or dancing around the flat. About halfway through my first proper listen...

17:51 / 23.03.06

Embdy got a solid release date on this? Metacritic sez 28/3 for the US, and some sources seem to suggest this is the case on these shores also, but others say 3/4. It's important becoz i want milady to buy it for my birthday on the fifth of the fourth.

Also, is Masta Killa's 'No Said Date' as good as metacritic's average of 86 suggests, anyone? I pretty much ignored it, because he's like my second-least favourite Clansman. (Worth mentioning here that hip-hop largely suffers on metacritic, and that 'Birth of a Prince' scores a mere 60, so I'm curious.)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:39 / 23.03.06

Seth's right, it is very, very good indeed. Only listened to it once so far, but I imagine that's the first of many, many spins it'll be getting in the near future.

Like maybe about now.

03:07 / 24.03.06

Yeah, No Said Date is really surprisingly good.

Keith, like a scientist

19:09 / 30.03.06

News and free mp3 about the Ghostface + Doom album at the Lex Records site

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:12 / 01.04.06

"I can't feel my face."

STARKS FOR PRESIDENT!

17:13 / 05.04.06

Am listening to this right now, and the skit where he has a go at the potty mouthed kid is hilarous, if in questionable taste.

17:50 / 05.04.06

There are some shocking photos in circulation showing the effect this LP can have on people's forearms.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

19:13 / 05.04.06

"You're not ma daddy!"
"I'll knock your Daddy out!"

...

"I'm a get my son to fuck you up."

07:26 / 06.04.06

"Eat a dick? Is that how you feel?"

Haus of Mystery

09:10 / 06.04.06

Can you all shut up? I'm completely brassic and can't afford to buy this, and it's making Grimlock cry.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:42 / 06.04.06

I recently obtained a CD burner and could probably sort you out with a copy, MacReady...

It is very, very good. Probably his best since Supreme Clientele. It's got everything, it pretty much ticks all the boxes in terms of what you could want from a Ghost album - the old soul sounds that surfaced most heavily on Pretty Toney, combined with other production styles from MF Doom (providing classic RZA beats in place of RZA, essentially), Pete Rock (fresher than he's been in a while, just check out that wooden-block sound on 'Dogs Of War') and Just Blaze in particular ("I'M THE CHAMP!") - and lyrically he gives you both thrilling crime narratives ('Shakey Dog', 'R.A.G.U.' - Raekwon sounding better than he has in a long time), and surreal flights of fancy like 'Underwater', plus that whole thing Ghost can do where he talks about something relatively mundane like chatting up a lady at a bus stop, and makes it crazily poetic and imaginative and beautiful...

And it's so, so quotable, as ever.

"On the low we still fuckin' them cops
Pretty things from all precincts
Friday nights, we holdin' their glocks!"

I have to say, 2006 already feels like a better year for music than 2005, and this album is a major reason why.

Haus of Mystery

10:57 / 06.04.06

Appreciate the gesture Fly, but I'm a whore for the real deal. Glad to hear it's strong.
Consoled myself by listening to 'Guerilla Hood' on repeat this morning.

Roll on pay-day.

16:13 / 06.04.06

"Eat a dick? Is that how you feel?"

HAHAHAHAHAHHA - I love the way it sounds like the kid doesn't really know what he's talking about, but evil Uncle Ghost is coaxing him through swear school.

Really feeling "Back like that" at the moment, it's making me do bad soul dancing like it's the eighties again.

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