Ghostace Killah Taps Into the Power of Imagination

Ghostface Killah – Credit: Nick Watkin*

Last year, Ghostface Killah told Rolling Stone that he was disappointed by the rap landscape, lamenting, “a lot of stuff be regular darts.” He added, “I don’t hear niggas doing storytelling no more.” His thoughts went viral, even becoming the catalyst for an additional conversation with Stephen A. Smith. While bemoaning a “lack of substance,” he declared, “We’re the type of niggas that can rhyme about an eyeball falling out your face, and having the police pick it up and put it in a plastic bag.”

He said “we,” but it feels like only Ghost would concoct that scenario — off the cuff, at that. Ghost has long been a rap surrealist, imbuing one of hip-hop’s most no-nonsense scenes, gritty New York rap, with a streak of vibrance and borderline whimsy. Only someone still in touch with their inner child could rap about a pimpin’ version of Spongebob Squarepants like he did on “Underwater,” from his 2006 album Fishscale.

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Supreme Clientele 2 rides the energy of his impassioned call for more creativity. He’s attempting to lead by example on a project with song concepts, skits, and lyrical highs reflecting someone that still loves making rap music. To be clear, Supreme Clientele 2, isn’t the masterpiece that the original 2000 album is. But there are plenty of credible rap fans who will argue you down that no other album is as good as Ghost’s id opus. This project, like his Wu-Brethren Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2, proposes that it doesn’t make sense to rate a sequel in terms of whether it’s as good as its decades-old precursor as much as how successfully the original concept was done justice.

A million rappers have rhymed about being raided by the feds like he did on “Iron Man.” But few would follow that up with this visual: “I threw my raps in thе fireplace, then right out of the smoke rose a dead man/He had big chains, sick frame, sick flames/Even had a white glove with him, thought he was Rick James.” At his best, Ghost straps listeners in on an 80 mile per hour rollercoaster featuring locked in co-stars like M.O.P. (“Sample 420”) and Nas (“Love Me Anymore”), and cinematic details like putting kids in a bathroom and distracting them with cheetos before a gunfight, as he does on the crime caper “Georgy Porgy.”

On “4th Disciple,” he evokes his classic verse on Wu-Tang Forever’s “Impossible” while depicting him trying to revive his friend Taj. On “The Trial,” he comes together with Raekwon, GZA, Method Man, and Reek The Villain, who all play different roles in a fictional trial. It’s a standout track of the Wu’s later years that speaks to the sonic ingenuity that Ghost has said was lacking in current hip-hop. “Metaphysics” feels the closest to the original Supreme Clientele’s spirit, where he’s rhyming free associatively over a sparse breakbeat with horn hits then opens the second verse dishing, “I could put my mama face on the pancake box.” Like some of Ghost’s most memorable moments, it’s unclear what he’s getting at, but the phrase is so vivid and comedic that it just works.

He’s similarly colorful on “Breakbeat,” where he spits rapid-fire over a pair of Eighties-style drum loops, rhyming, “Dodgin’ bullets while I’m guardin’ the base like Steve Garvey.” The attrition on his vocal cords is apparent throughout the album, including on this track, and it affects how cleanly his once flawless flow unfurls. But he’s still tearing through bars on the self-produced song. He follows that up with the more conversational “Beat Box,” where he’s flirtatiously rhyming back and forth with Aisha Hall over a Dougie Fresh-inspired composition. After those two overt Eighties tributes comes his lead single “Rap Kingpin,” where he and Scram Jones link Rakim’s “Check Out My Melody” with remnants of Supreme Clientele standout “Mighty Healthy.” Kudos to whoever imagined those two melodies blending as seamlessly as they do here. The song is another example of hip-hop’s capacity for cross-generation conversations — could we get a Rakim remix?

That said, the 22-track album has moments that it could’ve done without. “Soul Thang” runs long without him in the second half of the song. “Candyland” also doesn’t feel necessary, with his bar “Bill Cosby, K.O. roofies, this for the groupies” being a disturbing clunker. And while his “Pause” skit is a funny and self-deprecating take on fragile masculinity, his Dave Chappelle-featured ”Sale of The Century” skit is marred by a contestant on the track’s fictional game show who regressively boasts about waking up and slapping his wife in the morning. Sure, Ghost has his creative license to put that in a skit without anyone attributing it directly to him, but the skit was funny without joking about spousal abuse.

Overall, in line with Slick Rick’s and Raekwon’s recent albums, which were also a part of Mass Appeal’s Legend Has It series, Ghost gives it all he has in 2025 over golden era-evoking breakbeats and a mesh of soul and funk samples from his youth. No, it’s not a one-of-one monument of impeccable poetics like the original, but what is? It’s invigorating to hear and see the effort Ghost put into Supreme Clientele 2, one of the most imaginative, outrageous listens of the year.

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