Nearly a decade ago, the enduring Staten Island rapper Ghostface Killah put out a very good solo album called Fishscale, named after a particularly fine grade of cocaine. It coincided with a profile in the New Yorker, in which critic Sasha-Frere Jones described a telling moment at a 2006 gig. The rapper’s DJ put on an old soul record, My Ebony Princess, a sweet-natured 1975 single by Jimmy Briscoe & the Little Beavers. Ghostface sang along for a bit, before describing himself as a “70s man, a Taurus and shit, and I love shit like that. I’d rather write to shit like that than hip-hop any day.” It seems prophetic now.
He may not be crooning sweet nothings here, but Ghostface has finally made that soul record, alongside a band who draw heavily on the 70s, from blaxploitation soundtracks to jazz, without the use of samples. After 20 years, the Roots have slowly got the world accustomed to the idea of hip-hop being soundtracked by real instruments. But Toronto outfit BadBadNotGood are a different proposition again – a young jazz student outfit with a taste for hip-hop covers helped to fame by Tyler, the Creator (one of them frequently wears a pig mask). They have since moved on to collaborations, performing with Tyler, covering Bob Dylan with Frank Ocean and accompanying Earl Sweatshirt. Another Canadian, hip-hop producer Frank Dukes, is the enabler here, putting BBNG in the studio with Ghostface, who is, at 44, enjoying a purple patch. His previous record, last December’s 36 Seasons, was held by many to have outdone the almost simultaneous high-grade comeback he released with his original crew, the Wu-Tang Clan. It too had live instruments, courtesy of the Revelations.
One of this even more classy album’s appeals is the juxtaposition between the elegance of the music and the grimness of the rhymes. Tone’s Rap is a languorous, spacey roll in which Ghostface’s portrait of a pimp is both melancholic and cold. “Fly nigga Cognac sipper/ Keep a blade at the tip of my cane for snakes that slither/ Cry me a river, bitch/ Just want my cut of the money.” But no matter how dark the subject matter, BBNG somehow elevate Ghostface.
Other times, as on Six Degrees, BBNG are in the thick of the action, their tick-tock breakbeats, staccato notes and tense atmospheres emphasising the interplay between Ghostface and nasal guest rapper Danny Brown. They roll coolly onwards, on Mind Playing Tricks and Ray Gun, in which gruff supervillain rapper MF Doom joins in a sci-fi fantasy. The urban spaghetti western vibe of Gunshowers sounds like it was produced by the RZA, the Wu’s visionary – but here, Dukes and BBFG just capitalise on a pre-existing simpatico between spacious backings and Ghost’s flow.
Middle-aged hip-hop albums should not be a draw. Hip-hop has always been about a necessary urgency, acting as the “CNN for black people” Chuck D envisioned, or mythologising a frequently brutal reality. But as mainstream hip-hop has come to be synonymous with brand names and casual misogyny, it has also proved to be versatile, accommodating white Australian women and pretty much any subject matter.
So Sour Soul is not all bitches and Glocks. Elegant with strings, Stark’s Reality is an instrumental. Food is a key track, in which Ghostface extols the benefits of eating fish, rather than selling fishscale; of yoga and deep meditation. “Protect ya neck,” he advises, recalling an old Wu track.
