Hello! For the final day of the 2024 holiday festivities (yes, I realize we’re now in 2025, shut up, that’s why), I figured that I would treat the readers who have stuck around with something that’s been missing from the blog for a while now: an honest-to-God write-up. Not a former Patreon exclusive, and not a link to older Max’s cringe-y work, but a brand new review for your ass. I’m not sure how many of these I have left for the free site, but I’ve neglected the blog long enough, so I hope you two enjoy!
My Gut Reaction: Ghostface Killah – Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) (May 10, 2024)
While remaining Wu-Tang in spirit, Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) is more of a Ghostface joint than a Wu-affiliated project. Only two of his bandmates make appearances here, and absolutely none of the beats presented come from anybody adjacent to the Clan. This was disappointing for me to learn, since this was the same problem that plagued his previous effort, 2019’s Ghostface Killahs, in that the beats weren’t up to the lofty standard I had subconsciously set for him in my head (it’s hard to not do that when your career has you rapping over beats by RZA, True Master, Adrian Younge, BADBADNOTGOOD, the Czar-Keys, Pete Rock, and other highly-praised producers), although at least more Wu members appeared on that offering. Instead, Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) brings us cameos from the likes of Jim Jones, Sheek Louch, Fat Joe, Busta Rhymes, AZ, Nas, Remy Ma, and Ja Rule for some reason, so clearly our host was on his New York shit during the recording process.
Set the Tone (Guns & Roses), the title a slight pun on one of our host’s many nicknames, was released through Mass Appeal Records, a vanity label owned by Nas that has given us projects from the likes of DJ Premier, DJ Shadow, Dave East, Run the Jewels, and Nas himself, so at least Ghost was in good company. Production-wise, the album is all over the place, with seventeen different producers credited over the project’s nineteen tracks, although while the different instrumentals may not gel with one another, they are arranged by general mood, as half of the album is devoted to aggressive boasts and threats (the “Guns” side) while the other is more in line with what our host tried to do with 2009’s Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City, his “R&B” album. Whether or not either half of the project is worth all of this effort is beyond me – I haven’t listened to this one yet. That’s why we’re here today.
Tracks one through nine represent the “Guns” portion of the program.
1. 6 MINUTES (FEAT. JIM JONES, SHEEK LOUCH, & HARL3Y)
Having the first voice you hear on a Ghostface Killah album be, of all the rappers in the game, Jim fucking Jones is unsettling to me. He isn’t even rapping during his introduction here – instead, he’s praising Ghost (and Raekwon, for some reason, even though he doesn’t appear here) before quickly turning the camera back on himself, talking about how he used to whip up crack while listening to the ‘Purple Tape’ with Cam’ron, who also receives a name-drop even though he also doesn’t appear here. It was a choice, is what I’m saying. At least our host had the decency to spit the first actual verse on “6 Minutes”, a song which is not six minutes long (thank your chosen god for that), but named after the influence of Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick’s “The Show”, which is sort-of referenced during the hook (which happens to be the only place guest Harl3y appears, completely extraneously I might add). Pretty Toney sounds a bit older, but otherwise as energetic as ever, draped in his “grape Clarks and plum robes” as he steps into the club, and his verse is pretty good, no doubt about it. James Jones returns for the second verse, his flow having obviously improved tenfold since “We Fly High” since he actually sounds like a rapper now, and he’s alright, but the pendulum swings back in the right direction with the addition of Ghost’s Wu-Block partner Sheek Louch, who, predictably, kills it with his incessant need to show out behind the microphone when collaborating with others, whether it’s our host or his own bandmates in The Lox (“Pistol license, n---a, I ain’t gotta throw my weapon” is a hard line). Jewelz Polaar and Producer Plug’s piano loop instrumental isn’t bad, either – why, it’s almost as though “6 Minutes” could be significantly improved had Jimmy’s intro been trimmed off of the final cut. Still, I liked this one quite a bit. I just wish Ghost provided more than just a single verse.
2. PAIR OF HAMMERS (FEAT. METHOD MAN)
The first song most Wu stans likely locked into on Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) is “Pair of Hammers”, a proper Wu-Tang collaboration between Ghostface Killah and the newly-crowned Cameo King, Method Man. Steve Wallace’s instrumental is hard-hitting, but still feels like it’s missing that special spark to really pop off, but it’s still more than enough for our host and his guest to pass the microphone back and forth to talk their shit, their respective performances constantly parroting each other so it’s clear they were both present in the studio at the same time, which is kind of refreshing to hear. Two different songs from the late Notorious B.I.G. are referenced here, “Warning” and “The What”, the latter brought in by Meth, repeating (and revising slightly) his own lines from the original song, but while those callbacks may be blatant, the rest of “Pair of Hammers” is merely boasts-n-bullshit, with Ghost sounding a tiny bit exasperated behind the microphone, as though he cannot believe the audacity of his opps and needs to put them in their place, while Meth delivers his typical-in-the-2020’s curse-free verses (although he does drop a “bitch” as an ad-lib to one of Ghost’s bars, so whatever) and sounds fucking invigorated here, easily winning the unofficial competition that every Wu collaboration inevitably turns into. Pretty fucking solid start, Ghost.
3. SKATE ODYSSEY (FEAT. RAEKWON & OCTOBER LONDON)
And that downfall was quick, right? Over a sample from The Whispers’ “(Let’s Go) All The Way”, Ghost brings listeners the most adult contemporary club-friendly beat of the evening thus far. Our host’s self-produced instrumental itself isn’t the problem – our host has plenty of songs in his back catalog that follow the same blueprint, dating back to “Cherchez la Ghost” – it’s the song itself that feels vapid and empty. “Fuck you, n---a, this soundtrack shit,” our host offers, and if he’s talking about album cuts from movie companion pieces that don’t even appear in said movie, and are simply “inspired” by it, he could be accurate. The beat may, indeed, “make you wanna skate”, but Ghost’s two verses are pretty bland, and Death Row Records’ in-house Marvin Gaye impersonator October London does what he can with a thankless role here. The true disappointment here is Chef Raekwon, who reunites with his running buddy just to deliver a shitty performance that makes it clear he was uncomfortable with the musical backing and only did this so Ghost could have “featuring Raekwon” appear in the song credits. Perhaps this could have worked had Rae’s appearance been removed entirely, I don’t know, but I did not enjoy this as presented, even though it isn’t the worst song our host has ever released.
4. SCAR TISSUE (FEAT. NAS)
Since Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) was distributed through Mass Appeal Records, it makes perfect sense that the label’s boss, Nasir Jones, would make an appearance. Since he was distracted by the presence of a peer who he’s worked with since 1994, Ghostface Killah also drops homophobic bars during “Scar Tissue”, which was far more shocking to me than the fact that Nas absolutely demolishes him here with half the screen time. (At least that’s my reasoning behind our host still doing that shit in fucking 2024. The alternative is much, much worse.) “Scar Tissue” is produced by T the Human (yeah, me neither), who laces both artists with a rock-tinged instrumental that invites the aggression that Pretty Toney brings to the stage, but the reason Esco takes the crown is because, between the two, he’s the one that just came off of a critically-acclaimed, career-invigorating six-album run alongside producer Hit-Boy that only made his skills sharper, and also Nas opens his verse with the word “indubitably,” which amused me. “Scar Tissue” was the first official single released from Set the Tone (Guns & Roses), which wouldn’t have been my choice, but whatever. It was alright, but I’ll probably never seek it out again.
5. KILO IN THE SAFE (FEAT. ICEMAN)
I’m not sure who Iceman is, but he won me over by opening his verse with an allusion to Freeway’s “What We Do” (“Gotta kill witnesses, Ghost took his mask off”). Producer David Fourth attaches a classical loop to some paper-thin drums, which reads as weak but actually sounds fairly grandiose and cinematic in scope, with both Ghost and his guest spitting street shit and sounding both engaging and entertaining as hell. “The scales on the fish stay dancing,” Ghost offers, the surreal imagery of his rhymes still intact after all these years. “Kilo In the Safe” only lasts for the length of two verses, but that’s for the best, as it doesn’t give the listener an opportunity to grow tired of the loop.
6. SKIT 1
The fuck? Hearing Ghost stop the program dead in its tracks just to rank his favorite breakfast cereals does evoke a warm feeling of his earlier work, oddly (probably because of the laser focus on food), but this was entirely unnecessary.
7. NO FACE (FEAT. K*NYE W*ST)
What is this, the nineteenth time Ghostface Killah has spit over the “Synthetic Substitution” breakbeat? It does act as a cheat code of sorts, sure, but our host sounds tired and a bit mournful during “No Face”, his brash boasts-n-bullshit undercut by his older, more somber vocals, which make lines such as “no reusable hammers, they all throwaways” sound like, well, a throwaway. Producer EZ Elpee, the biggest name behind the boards on Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) by far, taking the easy way out it seems, doesn’t only loop the sample, obviously – there’s some piano keys lifted from a Delfonics song in the background, but the breakbeat is front and center, which is distracting since all it does is force the listener to recall much better Ghostface performances from the past. For whatever reason “No Face” features K*nye W*st as a guest star, but only in a rapping capacity – this in and or itself isn’t weird, since not only have these two worked together before and Y* has also been on a Ghost album previously, they both also worked on “New God Flow” using the same fucking sample – and he sounds weird, half-assed, and still manages to make sex sound clinical and depressing. (“No Face” also features a songwriting credit from Quentin Miller, famously known as Drake’s ghostwriter, and since our host pens his own material, I can only assume Miller wrote Y*’s stanza, to which I say, congratulations on capturing his voice, but it still sucked.) I guess I understand why Ghost would include this guy on his album, as it certainly is a conversation starter that will get picked up by hip hop outlets and standoms the world over, but “No Face” is kind of shitty, folks.
8. CHAMPION SOUND (FEAT. BENITON)
Producer Danny Caiazzo, a recent addition to the “frequent collaborator” list for our host and other Wu-affiliates (he produced all of Ghostface Killahs, for example), blends together the instrumental from Boogie Down Productions’ “The Bridge is Over” with other samples, the end result becoming “Champion Sound”, a track that sounded pretty good to these elderly ears. Beniton, a New York-based dancehall artist, brings a different energy to Set the Tone (Guns & Roses), his melodic reggae a nice soundclash with Ghostface Killah’s boasts-n-bullshit, and it just works, even if none of this sticks to the ribs. This was another song that doesn’t stick around long enough to grow tiresome, which is a plus.
9. CAPE FEAR (FEAT. FAT JOE & HARL3Y)
Ray Ray Scavo III’s piano loop for “Cape Fear” is low-key and decent by itself, but isn’t strong enough to withstand the boasts-n0bullshit from Ghostface Killah and Large Joseph (or even a returning Harl3y, who performs the hook). Our host does alright, his bars leading us nowhere but inoffensive enough, but Paunch Cartagena who brings the house down, by which I mean he fucks everything up royally. “Send them killers to your door, n---a, Postmates,” is but one example of how far the man has fallen lyrically since the 1990’s, resorting to clichés, designer brand names, and bullshit platitudes in lieu of, I don’t know, writing anything remotely interesting? “Me and Cartagena, it’s two of New York’s finest,” Ghost says at the end of Jose Grande’s verse, which feels like a move performed just to maybe save himself some of the guest’s fees for recording. Ugh.
Tracks ten through eighteen make up the “Roses” part of the program
10. SKIT 2
Gets downright silly with the multiple Billy Dee Williams references toward the end, but again, was this really necessary? No.
11. PLAN B (FEAT. HARL3Y)
Obviously the switch to the “Roses” theme comes with a change of sound on Set the Tone (Guns & Roses), as “Plan B” approaches more of the R&B-esque sonic backdrops of our host’s attempt at an R&B album where he didn’t sing as beatmakers Bundy and Greg G.S. provides a subtle, decent slower-paced product, but our host is as brash and confident as ever, chastising his fuck buddy for not taking the Plan B pill (no, seriously, that’s what this song is about) even though she knew from the beginning of their dalliance that he had a family and that this would only be temporary. Ghost dives headfirst into the sex raps of “Plan B”, only surfacing to deliver some goofy lines about how his partner had “accepted the terms and the… conditions” while admitting that, “I don’t need no more babies, n---a”. Harl3y pops up to deliver another chorus, this time sung through some light Autotune but otherwise mirroring Ghostface Killah’s audacious energy, placing all of the responsibility for what happened on the woman and refusing to accept any himself for fucking her in the first place. The cognitive dissonance here made my eyes bleed, and also the song itself wasn’t very good.
12. BAD BITCH (FEAT. JA RULE & TREVOR JACKSON)
Ja Rule? In this economy? Le sigh. There is no possible way that Ghostface Killah sat around with “Bad Bitch” thinking that the only possible addition to the song worth a damn would be Jeffrey fucking Atkins. To be fair to the Fyre Festival guy, though, this type of love/lust rap would have been precisely his shit back in the 2000’s when he was actually popular, so perhaps our host was aiming for nostalgia? Regardless, “Bad Bitch” is a competently-made song, which, for Pretty Toney, means it both sucks and blows. Both Ghost and his guest praise their respective bad bitches, with our host providing the specific qualifications for the title with “[she] pay [his] taxes, and she get racks”, which makes it seem like Ghostface Killah is saying the quiet part out loud, but whatever, while Ja Rule proves that he hasn’t been asleep for the past twenty years by making references to Kelis, Meek Mill, and Anna Delvey. Crooner Trevor Jackson isn’t anything special here, sounding like he was a package deal with Bam Beatzz’s instrumental, which is basic in all of the most banal of ways.
13. LOCKED IN (FEAT. AZ & BEE-B)
Ghostface and Brooklyn rapper AZ have collaborated before, most notably on the 36 Seasons album, where the latter was the secret weapon on an already-interesting project. “Locked In”, however, is no victorious reunion. Scavo’s production sounds like at least fifty different songs from 2000’s R&B radio, and the song’s theme is so bland, as both our host and his guest spend their verses wooing a special lady, although at least our host is so all over the place that he briefly takes a detour into the street shit that dominated the first half of Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) before returning to his senses. AZ sounds fine, so much so that I didn’t even roll my eyes when he deliberately mimicked Ghost’s lines from Raekwon’s “Ice Cream” toward the end of his verse, but “fine” is substandard in this instance, since there was nothing on here worth engaging with. Bee-B, a female vocalist I’m unfamiliar with, lends the track its hook, which, again, was nothing special – hey guys, not every song demands a chorus, you can play around with songwriting standards every once in a while.
14. SKIT 3 (FEAT. GODFREY)
…
15. TOUCH YOU FEAT. SHAUN WIAH)
Guest vocalist Shaun Wiah takes Mario’s “Let Me Love You” and makes it filthy in the most obvious of ways, which should have embarrassed everybody involved here, including producer Vital and Ghostface Killah himself. The musical backing is, er, lacking – it sounds decent but plain, and should have been gifted to any Soundcloud rapper for Christmas – and Ghost himself seems to have run out of steam. Sure, he sticks to the theme of “Touch You”, wooing, wining, dining, proposing to, and eventually sixty-nining his romantic partner, but there’s a finite number of ways one can talk about luxurious material goods and how one can afford them without question, and Ghostface Killah may have just exhausted all of his options that day in the studio. Dear Lord, this back half of Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) is interminable.
16. SHOTS (FEAT. BUSTA RHYMES, HARL3Y, & SERANI)
I’m already annoyed that Busta Rhymes wasn’t utilized during the more aggressive portion of the evening, as he would have been a better fit there. Oh well. “Your glow is brighter than jasmine rice,” is how our host chooses to kick off “Shots”, which feels as close to vintage Ghost as we’re going to get these days. “Shots” is kind of all over the place, as our host, along with guest crooner Serani and even Harl3y with his limited screentime, are all about the many beautiful women at the club (“Somebody yelled, ‘These hoes ain’t loyal’ / I replied, ‘These girls ain’t for you!”, says Ghost, which sounded to me like a years-late response to a certain misogynist with a gang fetish that also subtly edits the lyric in a way as to respect women more), while Busta Rhymes, whose flow here is quiet, focused, and still entertaining, is more about one single woman, courting her while promising to treat her with kindnessand consideration, which isn’t what you typically hear in a rap song to be honest. Producers Ben Grimm, Now & Laterz, and Producer Plug, three names that are as generic as you can get, unload another dancehall-esque clip onto Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) , but unlike “Champion Sound”, this one isn’t nearly as successful, save for the guest’s last-minute Hail Mary.
17. TRAP PHONE (FEAT. CHUCKY HOLLYWOOD)
Guest crooner Chucky HollyWood, who dominates this horseshit song, clearly comes from the Don Tolliver School of Recording Rap-Inflected R&B That Is Completely Devoid Of Authentic Emotion, the Autotune leveling out anything resembling “feelings”, rendering the performance into a computer barking syllables into your ears. “Trap Phone” is garbage, you two. Ghostface Killah eventually pops in to spit a verse, and he sounds okay, but he’s an afterthought on this Scavo production, which aims for a specific, generic vibe and lands somewhere in “who the fuck cares, this was awful”.
18. OUTRO SKIT
Ghost pulls a Ferris Bueller post-credits scene by telling the listener that the album is over. He does this while thanking everybody for keeping his career alive, and then promises his next album will finally be Supreme Clientele 2 before changing his mind almost immediately. This was a nice touch, and the way he tells us “there’s one more joint coming up, but the album is over” made me laugh out loud.
The final song on Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) is labelled as a bonus track, although I don’t know if it was supposed to be officially considered a part of either half of the evening’s dichotomy.
19. YUPP! (FEAT. REMY MA)
“Yupp!” was released well before “Scar Tissue” as a loosey that bombed at the box office, but I suppose our host liked it enough to give it a forever home on this album. He certainly sounds angry as shit over this Trufacez production, which is minimalist and kind of corny but smart enough to stay out of the way of its collaborators. Unfortunately, the sharpest line he offers here is during the chorus, where he threatens to scare his opp so badly that “you’ll be dick-riding the man like a black cop,” which, topical. Guest rapper Remy Ma, never the most popular choice for Ghost to put out a song with but definitely not first on the call sheet these days, at least if social media is to be taken seriously, sounds okay during her contribution, going out of her way to threaten every single person that dares look at her funny (“I’m practically a virgin, ‘cause I ain’t never give a fuck,” is a pretty funny line, though). Overall, “Yupp!” definitely doesn’t fit the project as a whole, so I get why it was pushed to the very end, but my argument is that this didn’t even need to be recorded. Not every idea that runs through your head is a good one, Dennis.
THE LAST WORD: Let’s not sugarcoat this, folks: the back half of Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) is among the worst music Ghostface Killah has ever committed to wax. It isn’t that he sounds bad, not at all: in fact, at times our host sounds downright rejuvenated, and it’s not like the guy has never recorded a love rap before. It’s just that his ear for beats has become infected by devils, and he seems incapable of discerning which smoother R&B-esque beats are actually “good” from the ones that merely Xerox the blueprint, unless he was deliberately hoping for some radio crossover appeal here, in which case, that ship sailed a long fucking time ago, my friend. There is almost nothing worth salvaging from the “Roses” portion of the program, save for Busta Rhymes’s guest verse, which is pretty great, but is notable for how Busta Rhymes isn’t Ghostface Killah and this is a review for a Ghostface Killah album, so you can sense my problem here.
The “Guns” half of the album is more successful, albeit by default. Pretty Toney tends to sound great when the mask is off, his non-sequiturs, sarcasm, violent threats, surreal imagery, and allusions to food all combining to create some memorable moments within our chosen genre, and there are flashes of that brilliance to be found on here. There are too many guests present that take the spotlight away from our host at times – Sheek Louch is always working hard to prove he belongs at the table, while Method Man is, well, fucking Method Man – but overall, Ghost works well with his collaborators and shares their energy over harder beats that should have been better, but are still decent entries onto the CVs of the unknown producers here. The biggest disappointments from the “Guns” side are Raekwon’s lazy performance, which I would have just erased from existence, as that could have made “Skate Odyssey” a contender, followed closely by the mere presence of both K*nye W*st and Fat Joe, the former barely giving a shit about his bars and the latter just doing Fat Joe things that annoy me, but I did quite enjoy “6 Minutes”, “Pair of Hammers”, “Kilo in the Safe”, and “Champion Style”, so there are things worth listening to on Set the Tone (Guns & Roses).
Pity those four tracks aren’t enough to warrant recommending that any of you two actually sit down and listen to the whole fucking thing. You see, life is short, and it’s bound to get even shorter once the new administration begins tearing down the very foundation of the United States, so you should spend your remaining time on Earth listening to music that is objectively good. Set the Tone (Guns & Roses), sadly, just isn’t it. Meth’s verses on “Pair of Hammers” are the closest you’ll get to vintage Wu-Tang here. Proceed with caution.
-Max
No comments:
Post a Comment