- #4
- Posted: 11/30/2014 19:48
- Post subject:
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One of the toughest matchups in the first round. Slick Rick's debut is an absolute classic, and ridiculously influential - although probably fairly basic by today's standards, he took storytelling in hip-hop further than it had ever been before. He embellishes his tales with great little details and descriptions ("it was Dave the dope fiend, shooting dope, who don't the meaning of water nor soap"), and he's got such a fantastic, distinctive voice, having spent his early years in Wimbledon before moving to New York. Almost every song here is a hip-hop standard, but particularly 'Children's Story', 'Hey Young World', 'Teenage Love', 'Mona Lisa', and 'The Ruler's Back' stand out as classics. Sure, some of the production is pretty dated (in fact, I'm pretty sure the likes of 'Treat Her Like a Prostitute' didn't even sound particularly fresh at the time), but there's something quite quaint and charming about these beats, and I'm so familiar with them that to hear these lyrics over anything else would just be wrong. That said, I actually think Slick Rick's 1999 album, The Art of Storytelling, is even better than this - the beats were far more advanced, as was Rick's rapping (though I'm pretty sure much of the lyrics were ghostwritten - plenty of artists would have been honoured to ghostwrite a verse for such a legend). I wouldn't bother with anything else from his discography, but if you enjoyed this album you really should try The Art of Storytelling.
All of that said, Supreme Clientele might be my favourite album of all-time, in any genre. I don't have a fucking clue what he's talking about half the time, but god damn does it sound like the flyest shit I ever heard ("parole kids live Rapunzel"; "see Ghost lampin' in the throne with King Tut hat"; "we want eight ravioli bags, two thirsty villains yelling bellyaches"; "pull out black burners like tonsils"; "we banned for life, Apollo kids live to spit the real"; "you're goddamn right I fuck fans"; "Cinemax smile, shot in thirty-five lens"; "he eat hams, shitted on himself twice"; "Tahitian fresh berry tree, she's a capricorn"; "fresh air fun, here's dun, alphabets, berets, jellies, bubble yum, soda tongue, too young to cum"; "brothers try to pass me, but none can match me, no girl can freak me, I'm just too nasty"; etcetera etcetera ad infinitum). The beats, largely courtesy of RZA, are slightly more colourful than the wintery fare reserved for 36 Chambers - Supreme Clientele is like a twisted love letter to '70s soul (a massive influence on Ghost throughout his career, from the Stylistics reference in 'Whip You With a Strap', to the brazen samples used on the likes of 'Big Girl' (Stylistics again) and 'Holla' (Delfonics) and 'All That I Got Is You' (Jackson 5) - it's fairly apparent Ghost has a lot of love for a particular brand of saccharine '70s pop-soul), but it remains resolutely hard-edged, definitely a product of the streets. Even though Ghostface's discography is amongst the best in hip-hop, it's tempting to say that he caught lightning in a bottle here - at no other time has he rapped quite as well as this, or quite as weird. Fishscale, by no means a normal album, plays as relatively straightforward, lyrically anyway, compared to this. Hell, even Cuban Linx is comprehensible by Supreme Clientele's standard. Like, I'm pretty sure most of the album is about doing criminal shit, but after that I'm lost. These lyrics might mean something to Ghost, but I wouldn't be surprised if he admitted that half of the time he was just saying shit because it sounded good. It's not as though he's just playing some random word association, and there are stories and messages here buried beneath all the oddly specific details and references to, well, anything and everything, but Ghost completely tore up the rap rulebook when he was writing these songs. It's funny that Ghostface is often regarded as a student of Slick Rick due his storytelling tendencies, but this shit reads like a James Joyce novel next to The Great Adventures. Certain details are just so vivid ("pigeon-toed Tyler's sister, with the fat ass" might just be my favourite description of a random person ever, and when Ghost states that he "never had baked Alaskan" you know that he's telling the truth because he doesn't even fucking know that it's called baked Alaska and not baked Alaskan), it's actually impressive how much character and personality Ghost manages to imbue in these tales, despite most of them verging on nonsense the entire time. But really, I can't explain why I love this album so much. It's just everything I ever wanted from music and more, and it should go far in this tournament.
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2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
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