Movies don’t create rappers. Movies make rappers more creative…
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Brad Shoup: Dennis Coles staked out a peculiar territory, and defended it for so long that we may have forgotten the magnificence of his accomplishments. Whether from appropriation, osmosis or dome directness, Starks refused the fly clichés in favor of ripe juxtapositions and that holy fool flow. And he kept the pace past 40, which is some Randy Couture/Satchel Paige insanity. Anyway, as someone who clearly wants all the Pretty Tone he can get, “The Rise” is a bothersome listen. Younge takes his cues from the RZA’s film work: there’s no dankness, just a reticulated atmosphere of tense snare raps and long-hanging guitar. It’s an SCA museum for Ghost to stock with recast dime-novel Mafioso origin stories (like “Child’s Play” didn’t do the trick?!), leaving him plenty of excuses for swapping details for landmarks. He’s talking about steez? The same dude whose three biggest hits took time out for a charlie horse, cracked skulls in the mall, and let U-God call butts “slim doo-doo makers stuffed inside pajamas”? There’s some poignance in warping his pronunciation of “killer” into an echo of Dirty’s, but a whole lot more in seeing a unique dude recast himself smaller in someone else’s creative enterprise.
[5]
Jonathan Bradley: “I always say to people that I left hip-hop in ’97,” Adrian Younge told NPR, explaining why he thinks the music of the ’60s and ’70s has more to offer than contemporary sounds. That probably explains why his contemporary sound is that of Portishead circa… uh… 1997. No matter, Wu plus Portishead has lead to great things previously; RZA’s “Kiss of a Black Widow” is the blueprint for this track, crossed with the intense mythology of 8 Diagrams. (It ends up sounding not unlike Schoolboy Q’s Portishead-sampling “Raymond 1969.”) So spaghetti western melodrama and comic book superheroics aren’t new to Ghost and, as a result, “The Rise..” comes off as a retreat to core principles rather than a push into new territory. It’s lucky then that this rapper’s core principles are so strong; “I’m the black vigilante: pro-violence,” he declares, as if RZA had actually ended up doing the soundtrack for Django Unchained. “Tommy-guns are irrelevant; I’m bulletproof now” is the Hollywood declaration of Ghost’s rebirth — the literal statement of the same, in the first chorus, is sung, comedically, off-key. The “murder, murder; kill, kill, kill” is slightly less successful than it was for Nas.
[7]
Alfred Soto: When the flanged guitar bleeds into the horns before getting punctuated with record scratches, I knew Ghostface had found the right setting on which to growl his kill-kill-kill catchphrases and slur his name. Said phrases are… rote though? We know he was a bulletproof Tony Stark already from whom fans can expect Colombian neckties from a black gambino.
[6]
Anthony Easton: As someone who profoundly loved Man with the Fists, it kind of delights me how much this works as a footnote to his co-workers film (the violence but also the Morricone sample). I wonder who’s writing in-world continuity for Wu-Tang.
[9]
Josh Langhoff: Listening to this is like watching cinema at the cinema. Why, he even tells you the color of the El Camino! Plus there’s a product placement for Ziploc that S.C. Johnson, A Family Company could totally incorporate into a commercial to run on Comedy Central, many of whose viewers wish they were Ghostface and need a constant supply of baggies. Um, what were we talking ab… oh yeah, this boils down to a snare, two “killaaaaaaah”s, and an impeccably misplaced “Murder murder kill kill kill” hook, and that’s all I need to get me in a good mood.
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Ian Mathers: Ghost is still in fine form here, and at this point he could probably say something interesting using the phone book as a starting point, but surprisingly enough I’m really hooked on the production; early RZA-esque, but somehow more tentative, mournful even. Even though the lyrics are all about supernatural prowess, listen to those sad, low notes in the second half of the chorus, and that first horn later. Rather than kung fu movies this sounds like a particularly low-key Western, and it works amazingly well.
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Ghostface has a very special voice, one that makes him feel more soul singer than rapper, the grit and squeal of his vocal striking you straight in the solar plexus. He seems to have been leaning on that voice’s visceral impact since 2010’s Apollo Kids LP, when his lyrics became blunter and sadly less viable to take the thrilling detours we grew accustomed to. Now he is to be found sticking in the pocket of comfort-food soul beats. His upcoming collaboration with Black Dynamite composer Younge places him in a murderer role, with RZA lending a narrative introduction to “The Rise”: Ghost was a killer, he was betrayed, he’s come back for revenge, yadda yadda yadda. It’s supposed to set the scene, but Ghost is punching the clock here, the familiar sound of his voice barely getting him through the track as he garrotes, stabs and shoots. “Hog-tie the capo all up/beheaded the driver” is boring coming from a man who claimed he’d “whip niggas out like waffle batter” and discuss it over scotch later.
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