Ghostface Killah

November 1, 2018 at PDT

Gonna Love Me (Remix) [feat. Ghostface Killah, Method Man & Raekwon] - Single

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February 7, 2000 at PST

Supreme Clientele

Ghostface Killah was chasing his life in 1997. He was 27 and sick with diabetes, and—thinking he had cancer—he went to the African nation of Benin with fellow Wu-Tang Clan member RZA, lived in a mud hut, was treated by a bush doctor, and came back with many of the staggering lyrics that decorate 2000’s Supreme Clientele. He sounds glad to be alive; he sounds totally freaked. In a time when everybody who ever delivered sandwiches for Wu-Tang seemed to be getting a solo deal, here Tony Starks, as he calls himself (he also calls himself the Black Boy George on “Stroke of Death”), makes everything stick. Even when you don’t know quite what he’s getting at, his abstract, detail-crammed narratives, often tinged with biographical asides, make for a vivid set of stories.

Producer RZA was wrestling with quality control. He’d just masterminded double album Wu-Tang Forever in 1997 and then sent out key members for solo projects, pairing them up with other producers. Ghostface Killah, however, he couldn’t bring himself to hand off, and RZA ended up producing more than half the songs here and revising the work of others. He offers an especially strong mix of his grime and besmirched classic soul. “Nutmeg” chops up a strings-and-flutes sample; “One” is a methodical track that repeats its monosyllabic titular number at the end of each line, screwing the lid down on Ghost’s anarchic verbiage. There are disses (on a skit and the song “Ghost Dini”) that got under 50 Cent’s skin, and appearances from strategic guest stars—including Raekwon, GZA, and Redman. Meanwhile, Ghostface Killah does anything for impact, with writing that feels like a Donald Goines paperback, Ip Man fan fiction, and several awkward pages of a coming-of-age memoir torn out of his notebook, all of it cut up and glued together for maximum emotional wallop.

21 Tracks

October 12, 2016 at PDT

Dat $tick (Remix) [feat. Ghostface Killah & Pouya] - Single

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November 1, 2018 at PDT

Gonna Love Me (Remix) [feat. Ghostface Killah, Method Man & Raekwon] - Single

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May 17, 2015 at PDT

Sour Soul (Instrumentals)

12 Tracks

September 12, 2019 at PDT

Ghostface Killahs

Clocking in at just over 30 minutes, his 13th album Ghostface Killahs dispenses with the pleasantries, spreading the grimy New York gospel. Ghost calls out softness and is quick to escalate matters (“Pistol Smoke”). Wu-Tang Clan brethren Cappadonna, Method Man, Inspectah Deck, and Masta Killa rekindle their connection on “Me Denny & Darryl,” “Burner to Burner,” and “Waffles & Ice Cream.” Ghostface’s firstborn Sun God appears on “Fly Everything” and “The Chase.” The latter track begins with a tasty “Scorpio” flip and then quickly hits downhill speed. When Ghost’s rhyming over vintage soul samples—see “Flex,” “Fly Everything,” “New World”—he’s in his element, painting vivid pictures of his flamboyant and violent lifestyle. As the rap landscape evolves, you won’t see the Wu figurehead rocking skinny jeans anytime soon (though we wish he would stop using homophobic slurs in 2019).

14 Tracks

May 9, 2024 at PDT

Set The Tone (Guns & Roses)

19 Tracks

October 28, 1996 at PST

Ironman (25th Anniversary Edition)

In the long list of Wu-Tang solo projects, Ironman sits near the top. The wordplay was vivid, the atmosphere tense, the performances—both from Ghost and featured players Raekwon and Cappadonna—somehow both casual and menacingly precise. Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…—“guest starring” Ghost, as the album cover put it—had raised the bar for narrative rap only a year earlier (a year after Nas’ Illmatic, no less), but Ironman was different. The stories were there (“260,” “Motherless Child”), but there was also a sense of heart that set him apart (“All That I Got Is You”), not to mention a surreal streak that made even his more boneheaded raps feel like poetry. You want to know how hard he is? He pees out the window on the freeway—that’s how hard (“Daytona 500”).

This was the vanguard of New York street rap in the mid-’90s: a little noir, a little Blaxploitation, a little pulp fiction, and a little bracing realism. You got the sense that crime made them rich. You also got the sense that it put them in a permanent moral bind. But neither were as important to the music as the sheer sensation of being in the dark hallways and cramped apartments where these things took place. Like its successor, Supreme Clientele, the essence of Ironman is its atmosphere, which—like RZA’s production—is as threatening and tactile as it is dreamy and obscure, like fading graffiti on a crumbling city wall. (Raekwon is expectedly great, too, but anyone following the arc and mythology of the Wu-Tang Clan will pay special attention to Cappadonna, who rarely sounded better.)

Ghostface later said he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be making an album at all, let alone one supposed to introduce the breadth of his creativity to the world: He was depressed, struggling with a recent diagnosis of diabetes, and watching one of his best friends ship off to prison for 25 years for a crime it turns out he didn’t commit. Ironman might not describe the intensity of what he was going through—but you can definitely hear him going through it.

17 Tracks

February 14, 2019 at PST

Czarface Meets Ghostface

12 Tracks

October 19, 2023 at PDT

Claudine (feat. Mathematics, Ghostface Killah, Nicole Bus & Method Man) - Single

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May 30, 2024 at PDT

No Face - Single

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October 15, 2001 at PDT

Bulletproof Wallets

One thing to consider when listening to Bulletproof Wallets is that it came out about a month before what would be Wu-Tang Clan’s last album for six years (2001’s Iron Flag). The allegiance was fraying, the tensions rising, and the image of the group giving way to something that looked more like a heavily negotiated trade agreement than a creative brotherhood, complete with nitpicky grievances and the sense that the parties involved didn’t support so much as tolerate each other.

Ironman was a landmark and Supreme Clientele even more radical, but Bulletproof Wallets was lower-key. Three years after Ol’ Dirty Bastard had gotten onstage at the Grammys and offered his expert opinion that Puffy was good but Wu-Tang was the best, you could hear Ghostface adapting to the cultural shift toward the hip-hop/R&B hybrids that in the next few years would become the norm, if they weren’t the norm already (“Never Be the Same Again,” “Flowers”). He still told crime stories (the Raekwon-featuring “The Hilton”), but he also played around more earnestly with singing (“Ghost Showers”), slow jams (“Love Session”), and the kind of rap-for-rap’s-sake that would’ve put a smile on the face of grown folks raised on Slick Rick or Run-DMC (“The Forest”)—all modes he explored further on 2004’s The Pretty Toney Album.

In a way, it was fitting: With Wu transitioning out of the cultural spotlight, the low-stakes idiosyncrasy of Bulletproof Wallets pointed a way forward, putting Ghost in the company of singular, fan-favorite rappers like MF Doom and Kool Keith. “Excuse me if I’m horny/No doubt, I might knock the beat up,” he raps on “Ghost Showers.” Now in his thirties, he knows how to beg your pardon.

16 Tracks

December 31, 2005 at PST

Fishscale (Expanded Edition)

Fans might argue over how to rank his best albums, especially when you get to the top (Ironman or Supreme Clientele? How lucky we are to live in a world with both), but if you want to hear everything that makes Ghostface one of the best rappers to ever do it in one place, it’s 2006’s Fishscale. As a storyteller, nobody paints such full pictures in so few words (“Shakey Dog”), not to mention has the range to come back two tracks later with the kind of gym-ready raps-for-rap’s-sake that make you grateful the form was invented (“The Champ”). He can do pop (“Back Like That”), he can do posse cuts (“Be Easy”), he can do old-school soul-sampling drug rap (“Crack Spot”) and streams of consciousness that would make quote-unquote alternative rappers pale with envy (“Underwater”). And hey, if a big-time label like Def Jam is willing to listen, he can even sing—just don’t expect him to do it in tune (his verse on “Jellyfish”). Wu-Tang might’ve bridged the gap between what we think of as mainstream and what we think of as underground, but it was Ghostface who maintained it.

By this point, Wu-Tang was dormant, and rap was shifting toward novelties like Dem Franchize Boyz and D4L on one hand (beautiful, exhilarating novelties) and the mixtape-driven experiments of Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane on the other. Not gangsta, but trap; not New York or LA, but Atlanta. An artist like Ghostface was on some level a throwback just for continuing to exist—not to mention one wading into the uncharted waters of being a rapper over the age of 35. Few rap albums of the time have aged better.

27 Tracks

December 8, 2014 at PST

36 Seasons

As something of a sequel to 2013's Twelve Reasons to Die, 36 Seasons finds Wu-Tang rapper Ghostface Killah reprising his role as Tony Starks, returning to Staten Island after four years to find his hometown ravaged by drugs and violence. Collaborating with Brooklyn funk specialists The Revelations, Ghostface spins his tale of urban warfare to the sounds of dusty '70s soul, with guests like Kandace Springs and Kool G Rap playing Starks' girlfriend and a drug dealer, respectively. From its clever beats to its cinematic scope to Ghostface's vivid rhymes, 36 Seasons plays like a lost Quentin Tarantino flick, full of B-movie thrills and a bloody outcome.

25 Tracks

January 25, 2018 at PST

The Brown Tape

11 Tracks

May 2, 2024 at PDT

Scar Tissue - Single

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February 7, 2000 at PST

Supreme Clientele

You can call Supreme Clientele a master class in the art of rhyming. Released in 2000, the album showcases an adrenaline-pumped Ghost spitting with pure venom and showcasing his trademark lyrical non-sequiturs. Over blasting '70s horn samples, he tag-teams with Raekwon on the boisterous "Apollo Kids," drops deep science on the Golden Age-inspired "Mighty Healthy," pens a vivid storyline on the frantic "Saturday Nite," and even reminisces about playground crushes on the innocent, piano-driven "Child's Play."

17 Tracks

February 18, 2015 at PST

Sour Soul

12 Tracks

March 16, 2023 at PDT

Unpredictable (feat. Inspectah Deck & Method Man) - Single

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April 18, 2019 at PDT

You (Remix) [feat. Ghostface Killah] - Single

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August 9, 2018 at PDT

Pearl Harbor (Remix) [feat. Mathematics, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, Sean Price, Pharoahe Monch, Tek] - Single

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December 31, 2009 at PST

Wu Tang Presents... Wu-Massacre

12 Tracks

December 31, 2009 at PST

Wu Tang Presents... Wu-Massacre

12 Tracks

September 28, 2009 at PDT

Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry In Emerald City (Deluxe Edition)

On his eighth LP, Ghostface gifts us with an R&B album—fun, casual, and sexy—built as much from smooth guest singers’ verses as from his own. “Lonely,” with its gentle guitar backdrop, offers Ghostface at his most vulnerable, weaving a tale of love lost. “Guest House” is a slow, ’70s-inspired bass groove in which Ghostface tattles about a rendezvous gone awry. And “She’s a Killah” bends Ron Browz's Auto-Tuned voice around the hook over waves of danceable drums.

23 Tracks