Pretty Toney is a wizard of pure chaos. He’s given the game some of the finest LPs we will ever study, but even them classics were full of curveballs. It’s hard to make a case that his catalog is all classics at this point, and that’s coming from a big fan of Ghostdini‘s weirdo excesses. I managed to avoid the hype cycle on this one; all I needed to know was that it was finally coming. Right on schedule, it’s May 10th, 2024 and we’ve all woken up to a new album from Ghostface Killah.
And, once again: pure fucking chaos. Seeing Fat Joe or Jim Jones on the tracklist makes sense, but how Ja Rule wound up here seems like an important scoop for actual music journalists to pursue. Is that poor midget bastard still working through contractual obligations to UMG decades later? If so, he deserves it. I don’t hate humanity enough to say we deserve him, but his Cam’Ron imitation here was a better showing than I expected. Props, little dude!
The most striking surprise on Set The Tone is how squarely Bulletproof Wallets the opening salvo was, right on down to “Pair of Hammers.” a slow, grimy banger with Method Man. When Raekwon rolls out to rock some uptempo pimp funk followed by a single with Nas? It would be reasonable to expect an album full of throwback filth like this. If you were dealing with someone else.
Not that it goes weird right away. Ghost’s hook game is god tier on “No Face,” which Kanye West kills, no question. An album of Ghost and Ye trading technicolor braggadocio would probably echo for decades. That slams into the classic reggae remix of “Champion Sound,” then the 90’s chill of “Cape Fear,” and all is right again with the world. His team-up with AZ on “Locked In” is equally triumphant shit, a slice of 00’s radio-rap heaven and one of the best songs here.
The album takes a hard left with “Plan B,” which could be the funniest and least appropriate R&B joint Pretty Toney’s ever done. Where 2Chainz makes Top 40 trap operas funny with his verse, Ghostdini imbues his unhinged energy into the entire track. These are Frank Zappa grade parodies of form, and he’s only doing it to pop off many dozens of hilarious jokes, too. All told, this joint is way more Fishscale than Ironman. The whole second half is club songs of various regional flavors, many of them hilarious, some of them excellent.
This joint also turns out to be more of a prequel than a statement. Track 18: “Yo, what’s really good. I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight. That was the album.” Then he announces “Supreme Clientele 2…Indiana Tone and the Temple of Goons or something like that.” So much for all the expert Podcast-Americans who insisted this album was mostly tracks from the forever-awaited Purple Tape sequel. Get fucked, nerds.
Everything wraps on a speaker-folding club single with Remy Ma, and in retrospect, all this chaos makes sense. A hot mess of self-indulgence, self-mastery and hungry intensity, Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) is another cinematic, psychedelic head trip from Wu-Tang’s Finest.
Larger than life even past the age of 50, Ghostface Killah dropped the most important album of the month, re-centering New York City with a summer worth of anthem joints. Like Christopher Nolan’s film Tenet, the artistry is too perfected for me to complain about plot points from the cheap seats. There is only one accurate verdict here. Five Dickies.
