Ghostface Killah’s renaissance – see his solo album 36 Seasons, and Sour Soul, the collaboration with jazz trio BadBadNotGood – continues with the second instalment of his hardboiled hip-hop caper made with Adrian Younge, LA producer and soundtrack composer: Younge’s lavish, jazz- and soul-tinged production providing the aural red carpet for one of rap’s greatest yarn-spinners. The story – featuring Ghostface as Tony Starks, the betrayed gangster who gets stabbed in the back by the DeLuca crime family – is at times ridiculously bellicose (the closing track, Life’s a Rebirth, makes the end of The Wild Bunch seem tame), but these kinds of over-the-top payoffs are what the Wu Tang Clan have always traded in. RZA’s narration and appearances from Raekwon (who plays Starks’ avenger, Lester Kane) keep the Wu connection alive, but cameos from Vince Staples (Get the Money) and Bilal (Resurrection Morning) make sure it’s not the same old faces going over the same ground. The Ghostnaissance continues.
