The Brag

Ghostface Killah
Supreme Being
By Lachlan Kanonuik

Throughout the rich, two-decade long history of Wu-Tang Clan and its many peripheral offshoots and solo careers, there have been none more consistent than Ghostface Killah. Armed with a seemingly bottomless arsenal of rapid-fire rhymes, Ghostface has established himself as one of the all-time great MCs, while compounding the definitive Wu-Tang sound. Making his true breakthrough as a guest star on fellow Clan member Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…, Ghostface has since gone on to forge a stellar back-catalogue of certified solo classics, beginning with 1996’s Ironman and continuing with a sequel to 2000’s Supreme Clientele due out next year.

Ghostface’s impending visit to Australia comes in the form of a co-headline tour with DOOM (nee: MF Doom). Before speaking about the near-mythological status of their perennially delayed full-length GhostDOOM/DoomStarks collaboration, tentatively titled Swift & Changeable, Ghostface looks back on when the two first met. “I was on tour with Linkin Park, Korn and Snoop, and someone gave me this CD with ‘Metal Fingers’ written on it, with no number on it. I played it, and it was right up my alley,” he recalls. “So when we got off tour, I called up my manager and said, ‘Yo, find this dude right here called Metal Fingers’. He searched and searched and searched, then finally found him. I didn’t know it was DOOM – I’d heard of DOOM, but didn’t know it was him. Then one day he came to the studio, played me some beats. He just had a bunch of cool beats, just things that I like. It was crazy, he just gave me them for [Ghostface’s 2006 LP] FishScale. One thing led to another, we wanted to do records together; he wanted to make some songs together to make an album. I made a lot of songs for him – but he never released it.”

Rumoured for release back in 2007, the joint effort has since entered a state of purgatory, with no release foreseeable in the near future. But as Ghostface explains, there is still hope. “I saw DOOM in London and we spoke about it, we switched numbers and said, ‘We should really put that out, the fans want it, it’s gonna be real big.’ He was feelin’ me, really feelin’ me, but that was the last time we really spoke about it. He got the majority of the music, but he just wanna do a few more other joints, just to make sure we got it right.”

Switch & Changeable aside, there’s still plenty of new Ghostface material to look forward to in the next year – most notably a sequel to one of the most critically acclaimed rap albums in recent memory, Supreme Clientele. “That would be [coming] sometime near February,” he says. “I want to get it out sometime this year, but I got this Wu-Block thing coming in maybe like three months, so I’m saving my thing until February, just at the top of the year, to go into it like that.” Though a full-scale follow-up to Wu-Tang Clan’s 2008 release 8 Diagrams was also hotly rumoured for release this year, Ghostface is quick to dispel it. “There’s no Wu-Tang album coming out this year,” he states bluntly, plugging instead the Wu-Block release: “Me, Jadakiss, Sheek Louch, Styles P, Raekwon and Cappadonna – plus it’s Wu-Block, so I gotta have the Clan on it. That’s about it – it’s not a Wu-Tang album that’s comin’.”

Despite conquering all terrains within the realm of rap, don’t expect Ghostface to be giving up on the game any time soon. “I love to do it. When you love to do something, you just do it. It’s like you telling me, ‘Why you wanna keep fuckin’ your woman?’, know what I mean? Or, ‘Why you keep getting pussy, nigger?’ It’s like, if you love it, you continue to do it. You got these 70-, 80-year-old men that are still fuckin’,” he laughs. “It’s the same thing with music. You love what you do? Then keep doin’ it.”

When Wu-Tang Clan first emerged from Staten Island in the early-‘90s, not only was there molten-hot competition within the local scene, but the East-West dichotomy was at an all-time high. These days, as Ghostface explains, things are different. “I don’t have no competition, man. The competition for me is like who’s on the most videos right now, or who’s doing this and that. But as far as me writin’, or me being a lyricist, there’s no competition for me. I know my power, I know that I’m my worst critic – and I can hurt myself. But in terms of competition, it depends on how you wanna go,” he says. “Like I said, the game’s changed – it’s more about being in the club, stuff like that. So all I gotta do is do what I do, but just get more presence out on the streets and on video and radio. And that’s it. I don’t got a problem with that. So that’s why, when you hear Wu-Block coming, that’s just me planting the seed for what’s gonna happen for February. Then from February on, you gonna see a lot more of Ghostface than what you’ve probably seen in your life,” he promises. “That’s my plan.”

With: DOOM, Chino XL [USA], Killah Priest [USA] and Sky’High
Where: Rap City @ The Enmore Theatre
When: Saturday June 2