Supreme Clientele 2
Ghostface Killah captured lightning in a bottle with *Supreme Clientele*, his supernatural 2000 sophomore solo effort. The album is heralded as a classic, as both his best and as one of the greatest to come from the Wu-Tang Clan. Months after the album’s 25th anniversary, he released a sequel that satisfyingly lives up to the original, part of the seven-record Legend Has It campaign by Nas’ Mass Appeal Records. Recreating the feeling of the 2000s is one thing, but it’s another to actually have old records from decades ago that still hit—and several of the songs here, like “Windows” and the second single, “Metaphysics,” are gems that Ghost has kept in the vault for decades while awaiting the right occasion. Aside from literal relics, Ghost is still in touch with his strengths that made the original so great. “Iron Man” and “Georgy Porgy” are stuffed with his distinctive brand of frenetic, cinematic street storytelling, recollecting robberies with raps as agile as they’ve been in years. Other songs take their time: “4th Disciple” somberly stretches the final moments with a comrade after a deadly shootout, and “The Trial” creates a scene with Raekwon, Method Man, GZA, and Reek da Villian as characters in a courtroom. “Break Beat” and “Beat Box” faithfully emulate the aesthetic of the ’80s hip-hop that he grew up in. And Ghost still knows his way around a soul sample, sometimes letting them play all the way through to extract every ounce of emotion from them. On “The Zoom,” he raps alongside sampled vocals by Lionel Richie, painting a peaceful scene of reading *Roots* author Alex Haley at the pool, with a gorgeous woman by his side. “This shit touch my soul,” he says at the start of the song. “You know I got an old soul.” That might be the case, but his rhymes are ageless.
When Mass Appeal promised legends, they weren’t exaggerating. The label’s Legend Has It… series is a summer-long, seven-strong release slate, boasting