Talking about the title of his seventh album, Ghostface recently offered a sleep-inspired explanation: "Dreams-- you can't really remember the dreams-- but I was someplace, I don't even know if it was rehab, but it was mad money in there. When I woke up, the first thing that came to my mind was The Big Doe Rehab." For most people, a dream filled with money would make them think of what they could do with all that cash. Ghost is not like most people. His vision is aptly conflicted; though he's ostensibly in rehab for having too much money, the only cure-- according to the characteristically daffy album art featuring orange medicine bottles filled with Benjamin Franklins-- is more doe. When it comes to the hustle, there is no way out. Continuing with the harrowing narrative fervor that defined last year's compelling Fishscale and the old soul loops that have remained a constant throughout much of his career, Ghost's new album may not uncover many of the verteran MC's still-hidden darts but, even 11 years after his solo debut, there's no denying one of hip-hop's most vibrant voices in its comfort zone.
Of course, his sweet spot is anything but sweet. As usual, the drug-peddling tales here deal in the currency of consequence; in Ghost's world there's no such thing as a simple transaction. Even on the hands-in-the-air anthem "We Celebrate", the boasts are tinged with annoying necessity ("The pool's a pain in the ass/ Fifty grand on Windex, kid/ They keep it clean, the whole bottom is glass") and concession ("If you fat I might take one for the team/ But I gotta get drunk first, know what I mean?"). Elsewhere, the terrors are more substantial. Both "Walk Around" and "Yolanda's House" are entries into the list of Ghostface chase classics (see: "Run"). "Walk Around" starts where most murder-rap songs end-- right after the shots go off. Describing a grizzly corner store scene, the trigger-happy narrator doesn't skimp on the details: "A part of his nose was stuck to my Padres" (trumping Prodigy's similarly gruesome "you've got some stomach on your Nikes" line from earlier this year). Soon, the killer is puking in his friend's car and dismissing claims of insanity ("don't put me in no mental clinics")-- it's a yarn ripe with the tangible vulnerability and irrationality of a first-time offender.
Meanwhile, on "Yolanda's House", the emotive rapper enlists both Method Man and Raekwon to tell his harried tale. "God strike me if you don’t like me," huffs Ghost. "I'm tired and I'm out of breath, the weed got me paranoid." The lines evoke Sam Jackson's famous take on Ezekiel 25:17 from Pulp Fiction. And while RZA may be the Wu-Tang member who can call Quentin Tarantino a close friend, Ghost's intricate crime stories and flamboyant violence-- not to mention his extreme verbosity-- increasingly sound like deleted scenes from one of the director's post-modern epics. On this track, a miraculously revived Method Man has to pull himself together after Ghost bursts in on him mid-coitus while on the run ("She’s asthmatic and you laughin', son/ I bumped my toe on the nightstand just running trying to grab the gun," Meth bitches, pulling up his underwear). These guys are well aware that getting caught with your pants down can often be as endearing as it is embarrassing.
Just as they provided the sweeping musical backbone to Jay-Z's American Gangster, producing tandem Sean C and LV of Diddy's Hitmen crew work their criminally smooth style on five Rehab tracks. But while Jay used the duo's blaring horns to vault himself to triumph, Ghost embodies the sweat on the '70s session man's brow as he relives the pain and hard work of his nostalgic sound snippets. "I'll Die for You" works around purchasing an expensive Marvin Gaye sample by pinching a symphonic bed of strings that uncannily replicates the lush grooves of What's Going On. On the track, Ghost fancies himself a modern martyr ("I die for the babies who can't eat with bare feet who need they mother"). But this Messiah won't die for just anyone ("First off yo you ain't my peeps/ I know we from the same town and shit/ But we ain't that deep"). Unfortunately, given the current internal Wu-Tang Clan war, those disparaging comments sound like they could be aimed at the RZA.
In his songs, Ghostface is always striving and battling and starting a ruckus so, in a weird way, his press fight with the RZA-- involving alleged unpaid dues and the head Clansman's unorthodox (and fantastic) production on new Wu album 8 Diagrams-- is apropos. Even as both the Wu-Tang and Ghostface release two of the best rap albums of this shallow year within one week of each other, the group's problems overshadow their conquests. Fittingly, at the proper ending of Rehab, Ghost isn't chilling on some getaway island, he's rushing headlong into an untold number of cops waiting to shoot him dead, Butch Cassidy-style. There will never be a happy fade out for Ghostface-- and lucky for us he still can't quite figure out why. On "The Prayer", Rehab's acapella conversation with God, an r&b singer named Ox sums up the rapper's ongoing turmoil as well as anyone could: "He said, 'Son you should know you're born to die'/ I said, 'I do, it's just hard sayin' bye'."
