GHOSTFACE: WHAT'S REALLY GOOD?

Fishscale: no one could get illa.

There's been a ton of blogging about Ghosface in the past few weeks and rightfully so. His new album, Fishscale (see above picture), drops on 3/28. After The Pretty Toney Album and subsequent mixtape fire, there's every reason to think that Fishscale will be a classic, album of the year type joint. Only, I haven't listened to it yet because I want to have it in my hands--no listening restrictions--and give it my full attention on the first spin. So this post isn't about Fishscale, per se, but rather about the recent spate of Ghostface pieces, in particular Sasha Frere-Jones's profile in The New Yorker last week.

I should point out a couple of things first. I think Sasha Frere-Jones is an excellent writer with a ridiculously extensive knowledge of pop music and a lot to say about it. I read his blog regularly. The New Yorker is the only magazine I subscribe to--has been for years--and I read every piece of music criticism in the magazine. Hiring Frere-Jones was an obvious coup, because The New Yorker's pop music criticism had been commonly M.I.A. in the past and, at best, told you about artists you could hear in Starbucks. SFJ has a keen post-modern take on music that is refreshing in a magazine that can often seem stodgy. But...

But... could there be a safer pick from the alternative press? As far as I can remember, SFJ has never pushed any particular artist or movement. While he will often put his subjects in a racial context, he treats race as a matter of fact and stays focused on the music. Maybe this is a good thing, maybe not. But now that my favorite magazine has a real critic at last, I want it to be someone who can push my musical tastes. Tom Breihan, for example. Because otherwise we get pieces like last week's profile of Ghostface (I told you we'd get there eventually).

I actually have no problem with any part of the article outside of the opening and closing paragraphs. In between, Frere-Jones's does a good job of explicating Ghosface's dense verses and unearthing the crazy humanity in the man's seemingly scatter-shot approach. In the paragraphs that book-end this criticism, Frere-Jones reveals himself to be playing to the crowd. He opens:

I own only one piece of art depicting a musician. It's a
photograph of an m.c. known as Ghostface Killah. He is smoking a cigarette and
singing into an old-fashioned ribbon microphone. In his knit cap and sunglasses,
he looks a bit like Frank Sinatra crossed with a jewel thief.

If the reader had any trepidation about reading an article about a rapper, SFJ immediately let's her know that Tony Starks is one of his favorite musicians, in fact, the only one whose likeness SFJ keeps in his house. Ghosface is referred to as "Ghosface Killah," a name he dropped prior to Pretty Toney, seemingly only to exoticize the MC. Then SFJ makes two quick mentions--the old-fashioned microphone and Old Blue Eyes--to further relax his anxious New Yorker reader. I can't think of a less informative comparison than Ghostface's manic, melodramatic New York chatter and Sinatra's controlled phrasing.

So maybe I'm reading too much into it? Check out the last paragraph:

...[he] began talking about how his parents had conceived him while
listening to this kind of soul music. Then he told the d.j. to stop the music.
"For those that don't have no soul, y'all wouldn't really understand or know
where the fuck I'm coming from when I play shit like that," he said. "See, I was
born in 1970, yo. You know what, I'm a seventies man, a Taurus and shit, and I
love, like, shit like that. I'd rather write to shit like that than hip-hop any
day."

Credit SFJ with putting one of Ghost's bizarre rambles in his piece, but not with what he uses it to say. The implication that rappers have no "soul" and that the critic's favorite rapper would rather be a soul singer than a rapper, plays right into the so-P.C.-it's-vaguely-racist sensibilities of the white liberal readership of The New Yorker that fuels boring and obnoxiously earnest artists like Common and Talib Kweli and equally awful non-rap things like Def Poetry Jam and ugly clothes.

What I love about Ghostface is that so much of what he says is deeply paradoxical. He celebrates murder and childbirth. He is a self-professed womanizer, broken-hearted lover, and everyone else you'd find on a city block. His albums have pushed the musical bounds of hip hop. Dennis Coles is, in short, the most daring and complex MC in hip hop. SFJ's article bothers me because it makes Ghostface sound safe.