You don't tune into a D-Block and Ghostface Killah collaborative project expecting surprises, so here's the good news: There are absolutely none on Wu-Block. Neither Ghost nor the LOX have switched up their style in over a decade, which makes listening to Wu-Block feel a little like watching a late-period Woody Allen film; before anyone opens their mouth, you already know exactly how everyone will sound, what they will talk about, what the surroundings will look like. If you're drawn to Wu-Block, it's probably at least in part for the way it promises, for 50 minutes or so, to shut the door on surprises.
Luckily, it's coming out, as all Ghostface-related projects do, right before the holiday season, a moment when we're all a little fonder of hoary old institutions and a little more susceptible to nostalgia. Ghost and D-Block are mascots of an unchanging NYC, as reliable as a beloved slice joint. But there's a blurry line where "reliable" fades into "stagnant," and mileage will vary for rap fans where Wu-Block falls. (Me, I still can't quite shake the memory that one of these guys, Ghost, was one of the most constantly surprising to ever do it.)
The tone is established from the opening seconds: The first song is called “Crack Spot Stories". It opens with the sound of Raekwon, Jadakiss, Ghost, and Sheek arguing over who has the remote, and the production is a faded soul loop. Sheek Louch nails the project's slightly-too-comfy vibe in one line: "Fiends at the door, I'm too lazy to let 'em in/ Turkey sandwich, barbecue chips, ESPN." Ghost is "chillin' in his robe," while Raekwon is sitting with his "leg back, examining choices." The scene is less crack-spot than man-cave, a bunch of grouchy old guys cracking each other up with the door closed to the outside world.
All of them sound great, though, and it's nice to hear them settle comfortably into their roles as older heads. Ghost is still finding vivid notes within his coke-sniffing kingpin fantasy persona, which is more than a decade old. "If I sneeze, the left side of my nose might rip," he yelps on "Comin For Ya Head". In that same verse, he gives us some home potency remedies ("You eat seal meat, dick stay up for a fuckin' week") and takes us to "a brutal rap battle in Zaire." On "Take Notice", he says "I do hood yoga/ I pull muscles counting money, need a new shoulder," and in a club-scene verse on "Pull Tha Cars Out", he shows off his still-sharp flair for imagery: "A baby ghost appeared from the blunt smoke/ It lingered through her hair and set into her clothes."
Neither Sheek Louch nor Styles P ever had golden ages like Ghost's to live up to: They've been endearing knuckleheads pretty much since Day One, and they're as enjoyable, more or less, as always. Sheek Louch's "winded touch-football participant" flow tends to make his dumb jokes hit harder than they should (see "My chain lower than your GPA," from "Take Notice"), but they make his unintentionally funny lines even funnier: "My bars is prenatal!" he yells on "Comin For Ya Head". Styles P has always flowed like steel shavings (one of the most quotable lines of his career is still "I don't give a fuck who you are/ So fuck who you are"), and his best line here is when he sneers the line "probably in the crib getting high watching Fargo" with a fierceness all out of proportion to the act of watching the movie Fargo.
There are other familiar faces, too: Cappadonna, yelling about a girl with a "thunder butt" on "Pour Tha Martini"; GZA working out an over-labored "life-as-car" metaphor on "Drivin Round", a song that also features a lightly crooning Erykah Badu. Raekwon sounds amazing, always, but his cadences and slang have budged so little over the years that everything he says has started to sound the same, giving his lines a "pull-string Raekwon" feel: "Sit back, laughin' with a stack and a clapper." See? You know exactly how that sounds.
But again, that familiarity is the point of Wu-Block. Everyone on the album sounds engaged and happy to be in the room. There are a handful of goofy skits, and a lot of hilarious cross-chatter in the album's margins: after the song "All in Together" ends, they stick around to make fun of people who wear fake jewelry. On "Take Notice", Ghost yells about the cold he has, acting grumpy and pulling the covers around him in the booth. "He's tellin' me to throw onions and garlic in my socks-- I ain’t with all that! Hand me some TheraFlu, some NyQuil or something." Small joys, but real ones that give Wu-Block a rap Statler-and-Waldorf feel. The conversation has long since passed these guys by, so they're having their own. You can visit whenever you like, but close the door on your way out.
