403. Ghostface Killah, "Supreme Clientele"

 


Just for sheer dizzying wordplay, it's hard to beat this album, one of the few Pitchfork 10's (along with Kid A, Illmatic, Live Through This, The Stone Roses s/t, and other classics), and absolutely deserving.  It's actually a holy shit moment if you haven't heard it through before.  I mean, just listen to this:


Scientific, my hand kissed it
Robotic, let's think optimistic
You probably missed it, watch me Dolly Dick it
Scotty Wotty copped it to me, big microphone hippie
Hit Poughkeepsie, crispy chicken, verbs, throw up a stone, Richie
Chop the O, sprinkle a little snow inside a Optimo
Swing the John McEnroe, rap rock'n'roll
Ty-D-Bol, gung-ho pro, Starsky with the gumsole
Hit the rum slow, parole kids, live Rapunzel
But Ton' Stizzy really high, the vivid laser eye guy
Jump in the Harley ride, Clarks, I freak a lemon pie
I'm bout it, bout it, Lord forgive me, Ms. Sally shouted
Tracey got shot in the face, my house was overcrowded
You fake cats done heard it first

That is some fucking wordplay.  Even if you don't get all the references (and you can spend some time on Genius like I did if that helps), you can appreciate the ability of the man to pack the syllables in at speed and with a dizzying rhyme scheme that includes in-line rhymes and between-line rhymes as well.  

Not to take away from the music; largely produced by RZA, it's a dense, layered sound, full of bravado and menace.  I think my favorite song on here, music-wise, is probably "One," which lifted the title word from the Sweet Inspirations' "You Roam When You Don't Get It at Home" and used it like a metronome, a regular refrain.  It adds up to a whole that's way beyond the sum of its parts.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

103. De La Soul, "Three Feet High And Rising"

Image
  Sorry for the service interruption!  Monday I had, like, work stuff to do and yesterday I was picking my wife up at the airport and they lost her bag and we had to file a claim about that and by the time I got home it was well into my Work Hours and you know, I'm just sorry.  (This was tail end of quite a journey for my wife that found her taking off in Ireland and landing in Newark, New Jersey, and then sitting in a plane for almost three hours and then the flight just getting cancelled and then staying in the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Newark, NJ [not recommended, she says] and then getting on a flight to SFO at 6:30 am and finally getting back here a solid 14 hours later than expected.) Speaking of the greater New York City metropolitan area, a group of kids from Amityville, Long Island, got together in 1988 and started making songs and released this album, one of the best in hip hop or any other genre, in 1989.  De La have been called the "Beatles of hip hop"
Read more

3. Joni Mitchell, "Blue"

Image
  Do you want the good news or the meh news first?  The good news is that this album is better than the other Joni Mitchell albums we've seen , or at least better for me.  I hated one of them and barely tolerated the other, so I was not expecting to like this, and after three listens yesterday, it was not as bad as I'd feared it would be.  The meh news?  I still don't love Joni Mitchell and I don't particularly like this album. Obviously, since it's the number 3 out of the Top 500 albums ever made, a lot of people feel differently.  Pitchfork called it "possibly the most gutting break-up album ever made," which may be true, who knows, but if it is it's about breaking up with a whole series of dudes, from Graham Nash to James Taylor to some guy named Carey.  (In Pitchfork's estimation, this is the 86th best album of the 1970s, so not exactly in number 3 overall territory). One thing that bugs me is Joni Mitchell's voice, which I find kind of g
Read more

1. Marvin Gaye, "What’s Going On"

Image
  500 albums later and we're out of albums.  This album was number 6 on the last iteration of the Rolling Stone list and has now moved up to number 1 (displacing Sgt. Pepper , which was the last album to hold that spot).  I think it's a lovely album with maybe three absolutely incredible songs, a fair amount of average-to-good, and some not great songs.  I'm not a voter and will never be a voter but I just don't think this is the best album of all time. In fact, I would be perfectly fine with this list if they just sawed off the top 3 and left the rest as is: 1. Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life 2. Beatles, Abbey Road 3. Nirvana, Nevermind 4. Fleetwood Mac, Rumours And so forth.  But let's take this album on its own merits. The first of the three absolute bangers is the title track, "What's Going On," the scene-setter for the rest of the album, a loose concept album that's told from the point of view of a Vietnam vet returning to a country th
Read more