Happy 20th Anniversary to Ghostface Killah’s second studio album Supreme Clientele, originally released February 8, 2000.
The race for the title of the best album of the 2000s was finished a little over a month into its first year. As soon as Dennis “Ghostface Killah” Coles’ Supreme Clientele hit the shelves, the competition was effectively over. It was the best album of the decade. It’s better than every album released since. It arguably belongs among the greatest albums of all time.
Ghostface Killah had been progressing as an artist since his early appearances on the Wu-Tang Clan’s breakthrough 1993 debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), really coming into his own as Raekwon’s partner in rhyme on Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… (1995) and then on his own debut solo release Iron Man (1996). With Supreme Clientele, he elevated himself to the stratosphere of elite emcees.
Ghostface earned his stature as one of the titans by being as wild and odd as possible. It’s an approach he first began to embrace on “Cobra Clutch,” a track on Wu-Tang’s 1998 compilation The Swarm. With Supreme Clientele, he plays things to the hilt, becoming a swirling whirlwind of lyrical energy and slang.
Supreme Clientele surges with life, re-harnessing all of Ghost’s energy and detonating it with the force of a nuclear bomb. He flexes his unique slang and off-kilter, almost stream-of-consciousness rhymes to create a wild and weird listening experience. He uses his storytelling abilities to build an extreme hyper-reality. Meanwhile, the rest of his cohorts are in peak lyrical form, reminding listeners of exactly why the Wu-Tang Clan ruled hip-hop in the mid-’90s.
Before Supreme Clientele, things were a bit shaky for the Wu. The Clan had been a bit lost in the weeds since the release of their second album Wu-Tang Forever (1997), which they’d hoped would put them on top of hip-hop, only for Puff Daddy and shiny suit rap to end up defining mainstream hip-hop in the late 1990s.
As a result, the Clan lacked direction during the final years of the ’90s. The core members released some good to decent material: albums by Method Man, GZA, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard were all decent. Inspectah Deck and RZA both finally released their debut albums, and while both were solid, neither seemed to capture what made them special as artists. However, the collective hit the nadir of its early years with the release of Immobilarity (1999), Raekwon’s second solo project. It was an outright bad album that left fans scratching their heads as to how the once-invincible crew could put out something so pedestrian.
The common missing ingredient for the majority of those late ’90s Wu-Tang releases was RZA. The Abbott had maintained strict control over the material during the group’s initial push, producing nearly all of the material on those albums and helping give each release its own distinct sound.
Ghostface re-enlisted RZA to executive produce Supreme Clientele, and his supervision of the project proved invaluable. Reportedly, he helped Ghost sift through hundreds of beats to use for the project. When the recording process was over, RZA helped with the album’s sequencing. So even though Ghostface enlisted a whole multitude of producers to work with, many of whom provided tracks for other late ’90s Wu-Tang-related releases, the long-player still flows seamlessly.
Supreme Clientele honors both Wu-Tang’s dusty past while updating its sound. It also focuses on sample-based hip-hop during an era when mainstream rap was being ruled by soulless, mechanical, and sterile production. The album sounds like it could have been released during hip-hop’s Golden Era, but still feels timeless.
The album-opening “Nutmeg” is a dizzying experience. The track is deceptively smooth, as Staten Island homie Arthur Wilson (in one of his only production credits) freaks a note from Eddie Holman’s “It’s Over.” But Ghost’s frenzied lyrical presence powers the song. He lays down layers of thick, nearly impenetrable slang, filled with fantastic metaphors and jarring non-sequiturs. He raps, “But Tone Stizzy really high, the vivid laser eye guy / Jump in the Harley ride, Clarks, I freak a lemon pie.”
“Nutmeg” exhibits Ghostface’s mastery of mixing these stream of consciousness phrases with “WTF?!?!!?” imagery and crystallized nuggets of absolute truth. For example, he sandwiches rhymes of “Scooby snack Jurassic plastic gas booby trap” with “Dick made the cover, now count how many veins on it” and “Staple-Land’s where the ambulance don’t come.”
Ghostface’s ability to transform the absolutely bizarre into something uproariously entertaining continues on “One,” produced by JuJu of the Beatnuts. Two decades later, I still have no idea how or why Ghostface is a “rap undercover dentist” or what “rhymes made of garlic” actually means. However, I know it sounds dope as fuck when he says it. He also delivers his lines with a complex yet effortless flow, stringing together lines like, “Meditated yoga, Paddle Ball, dancing with the vulture / Castor Troy laying for Travolta” and making it sound like the flyest shit ever recorded.
Despite the obscurity of many of Ghostface’s rhymes, he proves to be a compelling storyteller throughout Supreme Clientele. Some of the album’s best songs are surreal narratives filled with wild turns of phrases and minute details that make them unforgettable. On “Ghost Deini,” Ghost rolls through a New Year’s Eve party in a “booger green” ’68 Pacer, crew of goons in tow, and proceeds to rob the event. “We had the whole shit shook,” he muses. “Your favorite rappers dropping they drinks / On the low tucking they links / We made eighty off the books.”
The album peaks with the equally epic “Malcolm,” with Ghostface describing scenes from life on the streets in all their unglamorous glory. The centerpiece comes with Ghost relating the story of robbery at a club on a rainy summer night over a gloomy piano sample. The amount of intricate details that he includes in the story can be almost overwhelming at times, but they add to the track’s brutal realism.
Supreme Clientele also excels when Ghostface keeps things on the shorter side. On “Stay True,” he reuses a beat that Inspectah Deck rapped over for “Elevation” on his 1999 solo debut LP Uncontrolled Substance (some versions of Supreme Clientele’s liner notes list the song as “Deck’s Beat”). Ghost slickly rhymes over a slow and jazzy piano and guitar sample from David Axelrod’s “Terri’s Tune,” laying down more dense rhymes celebrating his own mastery. “That's how the God do, Motown 25,” he raps. “My orals like Smokey's voice: little moist, but choice.”
Supreme Clientele also works well when the music recaptures the feel of ’80s hip-hop. “The Grain” captures the energy of park jams and smoky cyphers, as Ghost and RZA trade blunted verses over a sample of Rufus Thomas’ “Do the Funky Penguin.” The two conclude the song by first breaking out into a rendition of the Dramatics’ “In the Rain,” and later a call-and-response session.
The late ’80s texture continues with “Buck 50,” a sinister posse cut featuring Method Man, Cappadonna, and Redman joining Ghost to tear into a sample of Baby Huey’s “Hard Times.” While Redman rips it “from Da Bricks to the Persian Gulf,” Ghostface celebrates his chiseled elbows and alerts people to catch him in Cancun eating grouper.
The album also succeeds when things get unorthodox. RZA and Solomon Childs join Ghostface on the brief “Stroke of Death.” The track is composed of a solid drum break and filled with frequent messy scratches, making it sound more like an abstract hip-hop track than a traditional Wu-Tang composition. All three emcees shine, with Ghostface labeling himself the “Black Boy George” and ending his verse with his most memorable non-sequitur: “White men scream, ‘Swim, Starks! Sharks!’” However, RZA stands out, opening his verse by proclaiming, “Smack the jail bail bondsman, strength of 18 Bronze Men / Tall like Karl Malone ‘Mailman’s’ frame of Larry Johnson!”
Other songs are less aurally jarring but still bizarre in method. On “Child’s Play,” Ghost reminisces about his pre-teen schoolyard romances in a uniquely Ghostface fashion. Behind the boards, RZA draws together seemingly disparate musical elements, including vocal samples from Mountain’s “Long Red,” a melancholy piano loop from George Mason’s “Aretha, Play One For Me.” He then adds stuttering drum rolls to punctuate the track at random intervals. Over the odd concoction, Ghostface muses about watching girls playing double-dutch and breaking his puppy love’s Chico-Stix out of jealousy.
“Cherchez LaGhost” is also made up of elements and concepts so incongruent that it would be a mess in lesser hands. The song is a Wu-Tang styled reinterpretation of the hit “Cherchez La Femme” by jazz-influenced disco outfit Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band. The song features two eight-bar verses by Ghostface and U-God, but most of the songs runtime is consumed by the largely unknown Madam Majestic singing the Buzzard Band’s original lyrics over a sample of the reggae/funk groover “Greedy G” by the Brentford All-Stars. The result is the most subdued and overall beloved entries within Ghostface’s catalogue.
Supreme Clientele ends with “Wu Banga 101,” which, as the title suggests, is a mid-’90s throwback of a Wu-Tang Clan posse cut. Producer Mathematics chops up a sample of Gladys Knight and the Pips’ “Queen of Tears” to create some dusty, vintage Wu-Tang soul for Clan members Raekwon, Cappadonna, and Masta Killa to spit their darts to. While Ghost delivers a memorable verse about a crooked pastor, it’s GZA, appearing in the leadoff spot, who’s at his sharpest. GZA raps with his usual laser-like precision and immaculate diction, delivering one of the best verses of his career. “Walk a road the great length you find too long to measure,” he raps. “My Clan'll make me rhyme like D. Banner under pressure.”
Supreme Clientele became a springboard for both the Wu-Tang Clan’s resurgence and Ghostface’s dominance during the ’00s. Wu-Tang Clan would release two albums during 2000 and 2001, both spearheaded by RZA, and both critical and financial successes.
The album put Ghostface on the “must check for” list pretty much in perpetuity. He went on to record and release a whole slew of albums throughout the decade, some selling better than others, but all extremely entertaining. He has the strongest solo discography of any Wu-Tang member, and remains one of the most respected emcees in the game.
Supreme Clientele set the standard for how dope hip-hop in the ’00s could and should be out the gate. Its sprawl and scope is considerable, but it never falters, as Ghost and all the producers involved rise to the occasion. Two decades later, its power still hasn’t diminished and remains as eminently listenable as the day it was first released.
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