Since Ghostface Killah’s Supreme
Clientele dropped in 2000 and essentially closed the book on the Wu-Tang
Clan’s near-unimpeachable nineties run, there have been only a handful of
serious landmarks in the Wu-Tang catalog: Masta Killa’s No Said Date in 2004, Ghostface’s Fishscale in 2006, Raekwon’s Only
Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II in 2009.[1]
With the latter, Raekwon knocked Ghostface out of the top spot in the Wu-Tang
pantheon, and since then Ghostface has been spinning his wheels a bit,
releasing the ill-advised but amazingly titled R&B project Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City,
the good but undercooked Apollo Kids,
the tossed off Ghost/Rae/Meth collaboration Wu-Massacre,
and the painfully generic Wu-Block with
the LOX’s Sheek Louch. On Twelve Reasons
to Die, Ghostface is reenergized and focused, and he sounds hungry again
for the first time since Fishscale.
Ghost has given the Clan their fourth landmark album of their second decade.
