____In the fall of 1997, Ghostface Killah decamped to West Africa. His diabetes had become cataclysmic: dizziness, blurred vision, bloodshot eyes, and concussive headaches. He hadn’t quit drinking, which didn’t help; nor did the joints laced with angel dust he still smoked from time to time.
Even before the diagnosis, he convinced himself of his impending demise, fearing cancer, though more likely AIDS. When medical professionals finally tested his blood sugar it was 500 mg/dl. Anything above 550 is considered fatal.
Wary of Western medicine, Ghostface flew to Benin to be treated by a bush doctor in a remote village several hours outside of Cotonou, the nation’s most populous city. Running water was non-existent. The inhabitants lived in mud huts and slept on the floor. When the RZA showed up to meet Ghostface, he saw his bandmate materialize in a dashiki, full beard, and unkempt hair puffed out. RZA had brought Kung Fu flicks—specifically Blade of Fury—which they watched alone as honored guests, the tribe’s children looking on in awe of them and the village’s only TV.
The spiritual nucleus of Supreme Clientele spawns from that pilgrimage. That’s where Tony Starks wrote “Nutmeg” and several other album tracks in a purge of voodoo spirits, occidental poisons, and crazy visions. It’s a masterpiece of comic absurdity and cosmic exorcisms, existential paradox and mathematic precision.
In an attempt to save his life, he seeks out a medicine man in his ancestral homeland and achieves esoteric and sobering realizations about existence. Sans beats, the Wallabee Champ scrawls countless transmissions snatched from the thundering din in his head. It’s as if Muhammad returned from the cave of Hira to prophesize revelations of seasoned giraffe ribs, Scooby Snacks, dancing with the most sexually vibrant member of the *Golden Girls, *and how his dick made a magazine cover (“count how many veins on it”).
About two years later, a fully clothed Starks actually made the cover of The Source and explained the knowledge self-obtained in Africa.
“Fuck all this Tommy Hilfiger, Polo…all this shit…they don’t give a fuck about none of that over there. Everything is the same,” Ghostface said. “But over here, everybody wanna be better than the next one…They might be fucked up, money-wise, but trust me, them muthafuckas is happy, man. Them niggas in harmony ‘cause they got each other.”
Mind you, Pretty Toney delivers this soliloquy while smoking a Newport in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria in Midtown, Manhattan, wearing an ankle-length, royal blue robe with a custom-embroidered “W” on the back. The entire time he’s enraged that “BET Rap City” isn’t playing the video for “Apollo Kids”—the one where he’s swaddled in mink coats and eating a golden ice cream cone.
This is Ghost, naturally ridiculous, the supreme smart dumb cat, the genius who embodies the innate contradictions of late American capitalism, gobbling Chinese herbs and getting acupuncture during the day and smoking dust and dodging bullets at night, capable of staggering misogyny and deep reverence towards women. He is both yin and yang, not just from song to song, but syllable to syllable.
“You see them kids that’s on TV? With flies on they face…I don’t like to see that. There’s no reason in this world with all this money that we got, for those babies to be over there with…big stomachs and shit like that,” Ghost adds. “I’m one of them niggas that’ll bring them into their muthafuckin’ family, I don’t give a fuck if it’s ten of them. I’ll get them.”
If Ghost ever adopted ten sub-Saharan kids, it was never mentioned on Couples Therapy. Other interviews followed in which he spoke of lofty plans to recruit Oprah Winfrey and Magic Johnson to help him build a school for the indigent children of Benin. And while his follow-through was shaky, his sincerity was unmatched. He also had a good excuse, considering the grave legal turmoil shadowing him during the recording of Supreme Clientele.
The District Attorney threatened Dennis Coles with “five to 15” if he didn’t cop a plea to attempted robbery charges stemming from an incident outside of the Palladium back in 1995. While parked at the venue, someone slashed Ghost’s tires and a brawl ensued between Starks and his crew against the Palladium attendants. One valet claimed that Ghost tried to rob him. None of this ends well.
As his attorney negotiated for better terms, blue and red lights flashed once again. This time, a friend named Dupree Lane got pulled over as Ghost trailed in a caravan behind. Using “disorderly conduct” as the pretext to search Ghost’s car, cops found a .357 Magnum loaded with hollow-point bullets hidden behind the glove compartment. Ironman was wearing a bulletproof vest—another felony charge.
Throughout this entire period, the NYPD and F.B.I. attempted to launch a RICO case against the Wu, who they branded a “major criminal organization.” It’s bizarre to weigh these accusations in the wake of Method Man starring in network sitcoms, the RZA bong-bonging all over Californication, and Ghostface doing full-length collaborations with Canadian jazz prodigies scarcely old enough to sip Alizé. But just consider the abridged list of alleged criminology: illegal gunrunning, weapons possession, homicide, carjackings, and a bi-coastal drug ring. They attempted to pin the murders of two drug dealers on a hit ordered by RZA and Raekwon. According to the Bureau, Wu-Tang Records was little more than a front for laundering money, which ostensibly explains why RZA kept releasing Wu-Syndicate and Sunz of Man albums.
Even before Ghost copped a plea to rot on Rikers Island for four months, Supreme Clientele’s plotline already felt like Martin Scorsese directing Shaft in Africa. As for the incarceration, it’s difficult to gauge its impact beyond the obvious delays. In the press cycle leading up to Supreme Clientele’s release in February of 2000, Starks attempted to downplay its severity.
One MTV interview describes it as a disguised blessing that allowed him to further refine the record. In* Stress Magazine*, he contextualizes it as a cruel but mundane reality that many young American black men are forced to endure. The liner notes dedicate a section to "my niggas in the Belly": Big Un, Ready Red, Mushy Mush, General, Wah aka Freedom, Born, Shaquel Dueprey Allah from the O Building, and Peace Lord.
Most revealing was a SPIN interview, where he explained its physical ramifications—the times the prison guards refused to give him a proper dose of insulin, causing extreme vertigo and sickness.
“I hold on to times when I had to struggle,” Ghost said. “That’s the science of going through hell and having to come out right—because everybody gots to go through hell to come out right.”
Rather than script a conventional narrative about this purgatory, Ghost focuses on the fractured chaos of the world that led him to the pen. On “Buck 50,” he pauses mid-seduction to tell a woman to “check the grays on the side of my waves/I grew those on Rikers Island/Stressed out, balled up in the cage.” In the next breath, he shouts out Clyde Drexler’s hops, Biggie’s Versace’s, Zulu Nation in the ’80s, and how quickly his back got chiseled after two weeks in the gym. Then he quotes Mary Poppins and eats grouper in Cancun. You’re dealing with Supreme Clientele.
It was supposed to be called *Ironman. *Instead, the RZA insisted that Ghost bestow that name on his debut album because everyone already knew him as Tony Starks. It just made more sense, marketing-wise. So Ironman dominated the fall of late ’96, the last of that royal flush of solo classics leading up to *Wu-Tang Forever. *It clocked over 800,000 CDs and tapes and debuted at No. 2 on the charts. RZA was probably right.
