Hegemony Rocks

Hip-hop seems to be lacking savior figures these days. With Biggie and Tupac long gone and that lovely egomaniac Jay-Z on the cusp of “retirement,” who’s to save hip-hop from the haters, the fakers and Bill O’Reilly? 50 Cent? Are you kidding me? Hip-hop deserves someone with more to offer than the requisite Gangsta Shit, and the man’s got hooks aplenty, but nine bullets and still alive won’t translate to rap sainthood all by its lonesome.

I wish more people would look elsewhere, especially the core of promoters, producers, record execs and radio programmers who dictate the bounds of the genre’s mainstream for all practical purposes. Missy, the Neptunes, Outkast, Timbaland, and Kanye West are all doing wonderful things within this framework, but there’s a lot more out there. (Granted, rock radio seems to be faring a whole lot worse, but there’s the blandification of the media caused by endless corporate mergers for you.) One man who’s been consistently overlooked is Dennis Coles, better known as Ghostface Killah, or Tony Starks, Ironman and what have you. Although he enjoyed brief chart success with his first two albums for Epic, both dropped rather quickly after auspicious debuts, and after 2001’s “Bulletproof Wallets” registered underwhelming sales he “parted ways” with parent company Columbia (although official word was that he left, I think it’s more likely the label dropped him). The erstwhile Wu-Tang warrior hasn’t even been given due rhyme time in his own crew; consider that while sometime running-partner Raekwon rhymed on 9 of 12 tracks on the Clan’s most recent effort, the already-forgotten “Iron Flag,” Ghost only got five.

All this is a damn shame, because Ghostface Killah is one of the most inventive and exciting MCs out there. Those first two records, 1996’s “Ironman” and 2001’s “Supreme Clientele,” are hip-hop cornerstones, buoyed by soulful, cinematic production, first-class guest appearances, and, most of all, the high-density, impressionistic rhyming style that is Ghostface Killah’s gift to music. It’s doubtful that he’ll ever top the gut-wrenching portrait of life in the projects “All That I Got Is You” or the frantically funky “Daytona 500.” Nevertheless, the aforementioned “Bulletproof Wallets” was a disappointment, not because Ghost’s rhymes fell off (he continued to hold his weight with crime tales like “Maxine” and the man-done-wrong “Never Be the Same Again”) but because most of the beats weren’t worthy of his name.

After that album’s meager sales, Ghostface must have learned his lesson, because his first album for East Coast flagship label Def Jam, “The Pretty Toney Album,” kicks off with some of his hardest-hitting tracks since the debut. Ghost begins the proceedings with a mock-press conference, ostensibly to brush aside all the doubters wondering if he’s still got it.

“How long did it take you to complete this album?” asks a reporter, to which Mr. Starks replies, “’S none of your fuckin’ business man, ya heard? Let’s move on with the next fuckin’ question.”

“Why don’t you roll with big bodyguards, you know, like the other guys do?”

“’Cause I don’t need them motherfuckers.”

With that he marks off his turf, and first track “Biscuits” is a stick-up in rhyme form, complete with fake gunshots: “What up money, freeze / don’t move / turn around / act like James Brown and get down.”

Good to have you back, Ghostface. We missed ya.

And it certainly has been awhile. Like I said before, Ghost’s last record came out in 2001, right after my ears pricked up. Since there hasn’t been any noise from the Wu-Tang since about the same time, fans have had to content themselves with his first two platters and the occasional guest spot (notably Beyonce’s non-album single “Summertime” and a few freestyle disses of 50 Cent, who Ghostface taunted in a segment at the end of 2000’s “Supreme Clientele” before most of us even knew who Mr. I-Got-Shot-Nine-Times even was). Hell, “Pretty Toney” was originally supposed to come out last August, but when I showed up at the store to see if it was in, news of the record had virtually disappeared. “Run” – a frenzied street single produced by none other than the RZA – popped up towards the end of 2003 and I duly procured it via Kazaa, but even though the word on the song was overwhelmingly positive I wasn’t that impressed. So when I walked down to Record Express to pick the album up a few days ago, I honestly didn’t know what to expect.

Is “The Pretty Toney Album” worth the wait? For the most part, yes. Ghost and his producers once again choose to mine the vein of 70’s soul and funk that’s been the bedrock of his best records, meaning that the beats are rarely slick and uninspired like so much of “Bulletproof Wallets” was. On the raunchy Philly-soul thump of “Push,” abetted by the inexhaustible Missy Elliott, the man actually sounds like he’s having a good time. On “Holla,” Ghostface actually raps over the Delfonics’ 1968 classic “La La Means I Love You” – not a sample, but the entire song, vocals and everything. And it works magnificently.

The once and future Dennis Coles has been through a lot of shit in the past few years, and “It’s Over” sounds like his attempt at self-therapy, an affirmation that he’ll pull through despite the setbacks he faces, whether in the manipulations of a vindictive ex or after his 1995 arrest for attempted robbery, which he recounts in vivid detail.

“I heard a voice through a bullhorn, the white man / He said ‘Tony Starks, you’re surrounded / Put down your gun / Look at the rules, there’s nothing but cops / Nigga you better not run.’”

But that’s all past history, and one can’t help but think his present woes include the usual record-company nonsense; it sure looks as if Def Jam’s fucking him over just like Sony did, since rumor has it that the label refused to muster up the cash for sample clearance so that several tracks had to be left off the album. One can only imagine the album that would have resulted if those tracks had been included, and as I write I’m attempting to locate the lost songs (via the trusty Kazaa), albeit without any success so far.

Make no mistake: “The Pretty Toney Album” is solid, several steps up from “Bulletproof Wallets,” and often enough it approaches greatness, but “Ironman II” it ain’t; Ghost always does well spinning scene-of-the-crime narratives, so-detailed-you-can-smell-it nostalgia trips, and plaints of romantic despair, but at points here he seems to be resting on his laurels, and, aside from “Run” (which is a lot better than I originally thought), his raps lack the volatile urgency that distinguishes his best work from the pack. So pray that, in addition to his best new joints, Tony Starks pulls out “Daytona 500” and “All That I Got Is You” if he rocks Spring Fling in a few weeks. And pray that I can get an interview.