Ghostface Killah: Pain Is Love
--- Fish (1996)
Every time I hear a Ghostface Killah song I long for the days of sample-based hip hop.
Nearly 30 years ago, Bad Boy Records took hits from the eighties and made them sound crazy. On the flipside of the label's celebratory champagne-soaked anthems was Wu-Tang Clan's epic street sagas set to vintage Sixties and Seventies soul samples.
Below the surface of the Wu's catalog, you'll find more than songs in the key of trife. Beneath the grit and grime of their rhymes you'll 360 degrees of the human condition. While each Clan member displayed moments of wearing their heart on their Avirex sleeves, it's Dennis Coles aka Ghostface Killah who's most masterful and prolific.
Known for delivering storytelling raps crafted with precision and intense attention to detail rivaling 80s rap legend Slick Rick---Impossible, Maxine and Shakey Dog are more than just typical rhymes about drug tales and gory gun talk: they are cinematic motion pictures with engaging characters turning up like colorful cast members in Spike Lee films.
Ghost's imagination is elastic and fertile. On Alex (Stolen Script) he's jacked for his original Ray movie script by a dubious investor in a PF Chang's restaurant. Underwater finds him traveling to an aquatic paradise where he finds spiritual bliss and makes salat prayer seven leagues beneath the sea. On Big Girl and Holla he rescues young girls working in strip clubs by putting them through school ("put you to school when clubs'a stop/pay for your books at two hundred a pop") and lays out a manifesto to save the children:
Speak to the seeds give'em leads on jobs
Educate, keep it peace with God
In return happiness in globs
We see the future like a psychic's palm...
To paraphrase the Isley Brothers---Ghost's at his best when he's at love. When he tries on Otis Redding's tenderness for size the juxtaposition is graphically off-kilter yet still adorable. On Bathtub (Skit) he recreates the sexy aura of Superfly's infamous love scene with an exotic love interest too graphic for words. Love Session finds him in full transparency: he's repentive ("you my pumpkin and my 'nilla custard/you cussed me out/ the time you found condoms laying in my pockets---I was busted!"), the bathroom door remains open during #2 and after love-making he's attentive ("the type after sex get a warm rag then wipe you") and prepares a full meal afterward ("the mashed joints/big onions on sauteed fish/little royal/candle and one big kiss").
Even when he's broke, ("the time you asked for those blue Nikes/yo boo I can't afford it!") he stays up all night on the block to scrape up eighty dollars to buy sneakers for his lady and revels in their union defined by "the beauty of our souls that Allah lies within."
On Never Be The Same Again he returns off tour to a cheating girlfriend ("I came on Friday/Saturday I found out/ that night I cried with the kids--I was out!"). Reflecting on better days ("heard your water broke/I was like punh!/I ran back!") he ponders on his rival's attraction powers ("it's alright though maybe he came up with the right dough/bigger d---/I don't know/musta been the right blow") and issues a warning to his lady ("just don't let me find out you got men around my kids!")
Mary J. Blige's wailing vocals and a loop of a young Michael Jackson's voice gives All I Got provides the right touch of melancholy as Ghost travels back to a traumatic childhood of overcrowded roach infested apartments and urine-soaked mattresses ("Two at the foot/two at the head/I hated to sleep with John-John/he peed the bed") play out like Claudine or Good Times on steroids.
You can feel the hopelessness in Ghostface's voice as he contemplates his fate ("Sometimes I look up at the stars/ and analyze the sky /and ask myself was I meant to be here...why?). With wisdom beyond his years he makes peace with his mother's choice of family planning ("I find it difficult why my old earth/had so many seeds/but she's her own woman and due to me I had to respect that/and analyze the situation/and try to find a way to step back").
Tupac's use of traditional song structure and straightforward delivery anchors similar classics like Dear Mama but Ghostface goes in a different direction. His masterful use of vocal emotion creates a sense of dramatic intensity that elevates All I Got Is You to epic proportions:
Mommy, where's the toilet paper?
Use the newspaper
See the couch, Miss Rose gave it to us
See the couch, Miss Rose gave it to us
She's the neighbor"
Sugar water was our thing, everything was no frills
Free lunch held us down like steel.....
All I Got Is You is a throwback to the day's when 70's R&B classics Sadie and I'll Always Love My Momma by Philly Soul lineups The Spinners and Intruders celebrated Black maternal figures. Lead singers Phillipe Wynne and Little Sonny Brown reflected on the joy of Sunday morning breakfast and the pain of Mama on her hands and knees scrubbing the white folks' floors to pay for shoes.
Ghost's mother is as a long-suffering heroine trapped in a cycle of poverty. Ever the loving son, he never judges her questionable family planning. (going through this difficult stage/I found it hard to believe/ why my old earth and so many seeds/but she's her own woman/and due to me I respect that"). As he reflects on surviving winters with no coats and drinking sugar water-----he relives a vivid memory of a loving maternal gesture, it eases the burden of a hard-luck life for one just moment:
All I Got Is You is a throwback to the day's when 70's R&B classics Sadie and I'll Always Love My Momma by Philly Soul lineups The Spinners and Intruders celebrated Black maternal figures. Lead singers Phillipe Wynne and Little Sonny Brown reflected on the joy of Sunday morning breakfast and the pain of Mama on her hands and knees scrubbing the white folks' floors to pay for shoes.
Ghost's mother is as a long-suffering heroine trapped in a cycle of poverty. Ever the loving son, he never judges her questionable family planning. (going through this difficult stage/I found it hard to believe/ why my old earth and so many seeds/but she's her own woman/and due to me I respect that"). As he reflects on surviving winters with no coats and drinking sugar water-----he relives a vivid memory of a loving maternal gesture, it eases the burden of a hard-luck life for one just moment:
But I remember this Moms would lick her fingertips
to wipe the cold out my eye/ before school with her spit...
Over the next two decades Ghost would continue to tap into his deep reservoir of feelings and find joy beneath his tears on Child's Play, Love, Wise and The Sun. Returning to the wistful well a few more times----he lovingly reflects on his mother's disciplinary ways ("despite the alcohol/I had a great old mama/she's famous for her slaps/until this day she's honored") and eulogizes her one final time on his current release Claudine:
I reflect on the scriptures and old pictures
Staring at my mama in the kitchen doin' dishes
Despite how she was living who am I to judge?
But what I've learnt if ya mama's still alive show her love
The pain that I experienced over through the fame
Carried me for nine months, she pushed---then I came
Thats why the seed is so attracted to their mama on this plane
To never hear that voice again, it never be the same
When the death is fresh it feels like your soul
is chocked in--sadness you find your self
cryin' in the open
Her face was cold she felt my tears in the casket
And every drop on her cheek I cried acid
Obituary photos and flowers all up in the cemetary
and cries, just like the end of the Cooley High
Mama come back we miss you, come back for
a couple of days so I can hug you and kiss you.
Part Blaxploitation flick-part Negro Ensemble Theater, Ghostface is rap's August Wilson----the prolific playwright who dived deep exploring the crevices of Black heritage and culture residing in his 20th century Pittsburgh hometown. Curating moments from his Staten Island past, Ghost does the same thing with the help of the soundtrack of R&B's past (the Delfonics, the Stylistics, The Moments, Luther Ingram, the Jackson Five, Al Green) and vocalists from its present (Ne-Yo, Carl Thomas, Ruff Endz and Nicole Bus).
Pain never sounded so good.
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