In an interview with RZA last year, he told me, "Listen to how Ghost sounds rappin' over one of my beats and then over another beat. The masked supervillain is in the company of a reputable bevy of soul-stacked sample-masters on Fishscale and their musical backdrops match Ghost's focus and vision. Aiding in the track's calming vibes is a mysterious, flute-laden beat courtesy of MF Doom, who's responsible for four beats on the record. Sometimes on "Underwater", the two come together brilliantly like when he notices "SpongeBob in a Bentely coup, bangin' the Isleys." Eventually arriving at the "world's banginest mosque," Ghost finds comfort in Muslim chants the rapper's rare moment of peace is well-deserved amidst Fishscale's enthralling agony. In the tourist role, Ghost is as compelling as when he's recounting pavement-bred stories of his familiar youth. "I'm not on my turf," he confesses as mermaids "with Halle Berry haircuts" offer guidance along the way. The dreamy account finds our hero playing out a possible afterlife allegory while swimming at the bottom of the ocean. It also strongly suggests that, if Ghost ever loses his appetite for rap, he might find success as a screenwriter.Īs the album's other specific tragedies- shitty haircuts, bus stop infatuation gone awry- fly by with deft everyman flourishes, it's the surreal "Underwater", with its strange spirituality, that proves most trenchant.
Whether describing the alluring smells coming from his victim's apartment or the ruthless history of an ancillary old lady ("She paid her dues when she smoked her brother-in-law at her boss' wedding") he passes on his way up to the place, Ghost touches on myriad senses and memories- it's the kind of song that requires several close listens to understand at all. "Fasten your seatbelts," warns the Staten Island son before unraveling a scene so perfectly lucid that an accompanying video would be redundant. Between broken wrists, familial strife, and self-inflicted gunshots to the groin, "R.A.G.U." is anything but glorifying toward its stressed-out, drug-running protagonists.īut the album's most vivid illicit spectacle belongs to Ghost alone "Shakey Dog" takes the rapper's penchant for eye-popping lyrical imagery to its extreme, offering a twisty Mamet-style narrative about a botched two-man robbery attempt. Hardly akin to the dealer-as-infallible-ghetto-champion guise currently purported by the likes of Young Jeezy, Fishscale's dope peddlers are harried and frayed. On both "R.A.G.U." and "Kilo", Rae turns up to assist his close friend, describing the perils of the drug trade. Ghost's godfather-cause is most noticeably directed at ostentatious modern-day rap hustlers who largely cook up tales with broad lines and no consequences, as he devotes several of Fishscale's 18 songs to the booming drug-rap subgenre he helped launch in 1995 with Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx.
Such ambiguities eschew didacticism for a lived-in wisdom that's as wicked as it is worthwhile. Tellingly, it's Ghost's own coke the girls can't stop sniffing. To wit, "Whip You With a Strap" rails against the lack of consequences brought upon today's youth with a smooth cleverness, while "Big Girl" moans about three fast-living women wasting their potential on cocaine mounds. Though Ghostface's veteran status informs much of his fifth solo album, his father-knows-best pose is led by breathless rhymes, not nostalgia.
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