December 05, 2007 @ 8:36 am

Ghostface Killah, "Big Doe Rehab" Review

by: Sean Fennessey

Ghost's day-old ziti is far more succulent than most tinfoil trash - and there are handfuls of gourmet here. But for an album by the Wu's most unpredictable force, Big Doe Rehab is surprisingly obvious.

Ghostface Killah
The Big Doe Rehab
Def Jam

It's a wonder the 37-year-old Ghostface is still churning out dense, deliberate albums nearly 15 years since he landed faceless, visage covered in a stocking cap, as a less-heralded member of the Wu-Tang Clan. Since then he has emerged, surprisingly, as the most artistically viable, commercially present Wu Member. But where 2006's Fishscale (Def Jam) was a fresh serving of greatness (and for some late arrivers, a first taste) aided by legitimately bizarre production and storytelling with a hunter's precision, the late-year follow-up More Fish and now 2007's last-minute cash-out Big Doe Rehab reek of leftovers. Of course, Ghost's day-old ziti is far more succulent than most tin foil trash and there are handfuls of gourmet here. "Toney Sigel a.k.a. The Barrel Brothers" is pure adrenaline, a descending megalon of guitar and snares. The name-drop galleria "White Linen Affair" is fun, if only to hear Ghost pay the same homage to T.I. he does Norah Jones. And "Yolanda's House," a sonic companion to 2000's "Cherchez LaGhost," overflows with a swirl of a female voices stacked and chopped over a first-person tale of bursting in on Method Man mid-jumpoff. But while the story is compelling and funny, it's almost too competent, too understood. The same goes for much of Rehab.

The things that made Ghost such an unpredictable force, even during lesser efforts like Bulletproof Wallets, were his sheer oddball decisions - consider that album's "The Forest." His second album, 2000's Supreme Clientele (Epic), is still his best, and it remains a case study in curio - overpowering internal rhyme schemes, idiosyncratic food references, screeching soul samples, whirligig vocabulary, a disjointed sequence that still arrests. On Rehab, Ghostface has recruited Sean C and LV, known best as Diddy's reconstituted Hitmen and the architects of Jay-Z's lush American Gangster sound. The sweep suited Jay, whose lithe verse never met a swaying orchestra it couldn't manhandle. But Ghost requires the manic and uncontrolled - something the Hitmen are loathe to create. Ghost also chips in on production with partner Anthony Acid on "Supa GFK" and "Killa Lipstick," inspired in their choice of source material ("Supa GFK" lifts Johnny Guitar Watson's "Superman Lover" in full) - but merely that. And "We Celebrate," a braying Rare Earth bite is fierce during its verse - "I can holler at the birds like Dr. Doolittle," he barks at one point - and brutally obvious in its chorus. Obvious: something Dennis Coles has never been. And for the first time, it feels like the veteran's undoing.

Article tags: Ghostface Killah, Jay-Z, Wu-tang Clan