Ghostface Killah
Supreme Clientele 2
Mass Appeal
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Sequel albums are a funny thing. There have been very few thematic-based sequel albums; fewer have been any good. Most sequel albums take a long time to be realized, as the artist often gets weighed down in the expectations of delivering the follow-up to one of their most beloved albums.
In the past two decades, the best hip-hop sequel albums were Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II (2009) and Redman’s Muddy Waters Too (2024). Both were the respective artists’ best full lengths in years at the time that they were released, though neither had much to do with the original installments.
Dennis “Ghostface Killah” Coles now takes his shot with Supreme Clientele 2, has latest release. It’s ostensibly a sequel to Supreme Clientele (2000), one of the best albums of all-time. And it’s an album that he’s been talking about releasing for many years.
Ghostface Killah is in rarified air. He first emerged as a member of Staten Island’s Wu-Tang Clan, and he became one of the greatest and most creative emcees to have ever drawn breath. His solo catalog, while not without its bumps, has been largely amazing. He’s migrated from Epic Records to Def Jam to eventually Mass Appeal, leaving a unique imprint in hip-hop’s consciousness along the way.
For whatever reason, Ghostface’s solo career has been a bit adrift since leaving Def Jam in 2010. In the past 15 years, he’s continued to release music at a fairly regular pace, but to mixed success. There have been some legit dope projects, like Sour Soul (2015) and Czarface Meets Ghostface (2019). But others sounded like glorified work-for-hire jobs, such as The Lost Tapes (2018) and Ghostface Killahs (2019). After initially linking with the Mass Appeal imprint, he released Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) (2024), which was his attempt to create music for both his male and female fans. It managed to be the worst album in his discography.
During the last decade-and-a-half, it often felt like Ghostface was biding his time until he decided he found the right situation to release Supreme Clientele 2. It’s an album that’s been in the works for at least fifteen years; Apollo Kids (2010), his last album with Def Jam was purportedly conceived as a “mixtape” that would precede the release of SC2. Then in 2021, Ghostface announced that he was finally going to release the album, with it being executive produced by Mike Dean and Kanye West (groan). It finally sees the light of day more than twenty-five years since the release of the original Supreme Clientele, as part of Mass Appeal’s Legend Has It… series.
The result is…good. Often very good. Ghostface is indeed rapping his ass off, and is certainly not phoning things in. He creates vivid stories and delivers entertaining braggadocio. He revives some of his stylistic “classics” and covers new ground. The production is pretty solid.
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That said, it never really sounds like a sequel to the original Supreme Clientele. His lyrics are missing the off-the-wall weirdness that he often expressed on that album. There’s no stream of consciousness rhymes or bizarre non-sequiturs. It’s a lot more straightforward than what he offered the world over a quarter of a century ago.
Overall, the album is a bit unfocussed. Often the songs sound like they were pulled together from a number of different projects. Or at least different versions of what he wanted the Supreme Clientele 2 project to be over the course of what appears to have been a lengthy recording process. The lack of focus contributes to the album, even at a 49-minute runtime, sprawling a bit more than necessary. It ends up sounding like the pre-SC2 mixtape that Ghost envisioned Apollo Kids would be.
Much of the album’s middle portion sounds like it was intended for a never fully realized Indiana Tone and the Temple of Goons mixtape. Some tracks, “hosted” by DJ Ty Boogie, invoke hip-hop of the mid to late 1980s. A lot of these tracks are pretty short, but all get the most out of their mileage.
“Breakbeats” features Ghostface delivering verses at a furious pace to well-known breaks from Syl Johnson’s “Different Strokes” and Juice’s “Catch a Groove.” “Beat Box” pays homage to Doug E. Fresh and Biz Markie, with Ghost occasionally channeling Slick Rick on the mic. “Rap Kingpin,” the album’s first single, takes portions of Eric B. & Rakim’s “My Melody,” blending it with Ghost’s “Mighty Healthy,” in one of the album’s few explicit O.G. Supreme Clientele call-backs.
Other tracks pay tribute to hip-hop’s late 1980s/early 1990s golden era, with Ghostface rhyming over dusty and familiar loops. He describes a vintage Tony Starks crime caper on “Georgy Porgy,” rapping to a sample of the Toto song of the same name. “Windows” is a tribute to Big Daddy Kane, with Ghostface rhyming like a man possessed to much of Tom Jones’ “Looking Out My Window.” On the second verse, he describes the harsh realities of prison, rapping, “Abomination, razor raps and conservation / You can get popped on in population / Opps slid in the ox with like four in the box / You see blood on the floor, just continue to mop.”
Wrapped around these tributes, Ghostface provides material influenced by many of the albums he recorded in the first decade of the 21st century…except Supreme Clientele. He dusts off his Pretty Toney Album (2004) era flow on “Metaphysics,” the album’s second single, rhyming to a sample of Monk Higgins’ version of “One Man Band (Plays All Alone).” Though the song was apparently recorded in 2004, it seemingly features a shout-out to Kendrick Lamar (unless Ghostface knew someone else back then named “K-Dot”).
“Candyland” could have easily been lifted from the Bulletproof Wallets (2001) sessions. Here Ghostface assumes the role of a Willy Wonka/Sammy Davis Jr. inspired drug dealer, gleefully dispersing all manners of narcotics. Though at least a verse of the song was written in the early ’00s, I imagine some of it was written closer to the present; some of the drugs he offers up weren’t readily available until recently.
“The Zoom” is Ghostface’s latest version of “rapping over the original sample source in its entirety,” rhyming about living the good life to The Commodores’ “Zoom.” The song “4th Disciple” takes things back even earlier into Ghost’s history, as the track’s single verse could pass for an alternate version of his masterful contribution to Wu-Tang Clan’s “Impossible” (a song, not coincidentally I’m sure, also produced by 4th Disciple). Here Starks and friends discover Taj, a comrade-in-arms, bleeding to death after a shootout. His lyrics take Ghost through denial, desperation, sorrow, and resignation as he watches his friend get “disconnected from life like a VCR.”
Ghostface teams up with some other like-minded artists. He’s joined by a relatively subdued M.O.P. on the soulful “Sample 420,” and shares mic time with Styles P and Conway the Machine on “Curtis May.” “Love Me Anymore” is a surprisingly rare collaboration with Nas. The pair demonstrate how good they can sound on the same track, making up for last year’s kinda lackluster “Scar Tissue.”
And Ghostface does make sure to collaborate on the mic with his Wu-Tang brethren. “Soul Thang” is the best of these, featuring Ghostface and a bevy of young Wu-Disciples flowing to a solid drum track and vocal sample from Gladys McFadden and The Loving Sister’s “Running Short on Love Today.” “The Trial” concept track doesn’t quite work overall in execution but features classic chemistry between Raekwon and Ghost and a verse from an invigorated GZA. Method Man is in peak form on “You Ma Friend,” a touching meditation on the complicated dynamics of lifelong friendship. “We men, right? Sometimes we fight, we friends, right?” he raps. “Actin' all light-skin and you ain't even that skin type.”
Supreme Clientele 2 reinforces that while Ghostface could probably use a better “editor,” he still possesses an abundance of talent. Tying this release to a project as venerated as Supreme Clientele probably isn’t doing it any favors. Regardless, I can just pretend its named something else and enjoy it for its dopest moments.
Notable Tracks: “4th Disciple” | “Soul Thing” | “Windows” | “You Ma Friend”
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