Ghostface Killah: The Big Doe Rehab

If

the title weren't already taken More Fish would be a fitting name for Ghostface's new

album, another tour de force from a guy who made history with his Wu-Tang

brethren while still in his early twenties and just keeps getting better with

age. But where the glorified mix-tape More Fish sounded like a collection

of outtakes and leftovers, The Big Doe Rehab feels like a worthy sequel

to last year's Fishscale. Consider it The Godfather Part II to Fishscale's revered crime epic.

The forever-agitated Ghostface once again thrusts

listeners straight into gritty, vivid crime world milieus with little in the

way of exposition. "Yolanda's House" plunges listeners deep into the tail end

of a night gone horribly awry as a panicked Ghost flees the cops and a drug

bust and solicits the help of a buck-naked and embarrassed Method Man before

Raekwon shows up seeking partners in crime. It's the album in miniature, a

giddy rush of novelistic detail (you can practically hear Ghost's ragged breath

and mocking laughter as Meth's asthmatic lover struggles to cover up following

Ghost's unexpected arrival), dark humor and tag-team storytelling in the

classic Wu-Tang vein. 

Rehab packs the visceral, transgressive punch of the

best crime fiction but it's equally adept at old-school Sunday-in-the-park jams

(the infectious single "Celebrate") and wiggy conceptual tracks like "White

Linen Affair (The Toney Awards)," wherein Ghostface provides play-by-play for a

gala populated by a who's who of hip-hop and R&B luminaries (and,

apparently just for variety, Robin Leach and Meryl Streep). Along with Raekwon,

Ghostface has publicly come out against the direction of the new Wu-Tang album.

Here Ghost puts his talent where his million-dollar mouthpiece is, illustrating

by example exactly how a late-period Wu-Tang project should feel and sound.