Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 10/04/06
Label: Def Jam

Although Method Man has the pop star charisma and Genius / GZA the lacerating poetry, ODB had the car-crash life story and Rza maintains the conceptual and beat-making genius, for connoisseurs, Ghostface was always the choice emcee among the Wu-Tang pack. He'd marked his card with scene-stealing appearances on Raekwon's dazzling 1995 LP "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx", and followed it up with his own "Ironman" in '96.

That record set a pattern: beats that recall hip hop's sample-happy late-'80s heyday, supporting lyrical flights-of-fancy that mix introspection and that rarity in rap, genuine emotion, with thug life storylines and explorations of the drug game that are both metaphorical and direct at the same time. Since then, rap has come around to his way of thinking, but Ghost is now so far down his own path that the music's mainstream simply cannot keep up.

Devotion to his single-minded cause means that here, on his fifth solo album, Dennis Coles remains leagues distant from commercial success, even as the templates he helped create become increasingly fundamental to the rap industry's bottom line. An illustration: the dealer shtick he and Rae cooked up on "Cuban Linx" provided Biggie and Jay-Z with the tools to execute their mid-'90s masterplans - listen to Nas's "Last Real Nigga Alive" for evidence of how Ghost's and Rae's slanguage was pivotal. Yet "Bricks", the track they did for the Biggie "Duets" album - included here as a bonus - didn't make the cut.

So Ghost knows that pretty much only the people who are already down with his programme are going to be tuning in to part five. And "Fishscale" is a purist's delight, an album seemingly crafted solely for those who've been chasing his maverick tail for the past decade. "Kilo" plays the dealer metaphor game to show where Ghost's loyalties lie - "Some say a drug dealer's destiny is reaching the Ki", he raps (echoing Nas's "Street Dreams") "I'd rather be the man behind the door, supplyin' the streets". And while Ne-Yo is drafted in for the single "Back Like That" and "Momma" has - gasp! - a chorus, this is a major label rap record that makes virtually no concessions to a commercial imperative.

Instead, on the insuperable "Be Easy" - "Niggas run around with the fake frowns, sell 'em on eBay" - the incomparable street narrative of "Shakey Dog" - "She paid her dues when she smoked his brother-in-law at his boss's wedding" - or the frankly indescribable "Sopranos"-meets-Steve Zissou fantasy "Underwater" - "Pearls on the mermaid girls / Gucci belts that they rock for no reason from a different world / Up ahead lies Noah's Ark, but that's waves away" - he restates the case he's been making all these years, for individuality, creativity and carefully constructed and maintained inscrutability.

He may never have a hit, but Ghostface Killah remains hip hop's national treasure.

    by Angus Batey