If modern R&B strives to be baby-making music, then what is Ghostdini Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City, Ghostface Killah's new R&B album? Prophylactic music? Because, outside of Marvin Gaye's divorce album, Here My Dear, it's hard to imagine a less romantic album than Ghostface's bizarre (and bizarrely entertaining) stab at the genre.
On the pornographic "Stapleton Sex," Ghostface does in two and a half minutes what took 2 Live Crew did in their entire career, leaving no orifice unscathed, then telling his girl not to touch him after he finishes (not his preferred term). Elsewhere, the rapper reveals himself a serial cheater, impregnating his conquests because he's adverse to protection. In one of the album's more tender moments, Ghost finishes a fried meal and asks his girl to rub his bloated belly. And later, Fabolous makes a quick cameo as a cable guy sleeping with Ghostface's wife. Ghostface shoots him.
But despite the incongruity between sound and subject matter, the record works for the same reason most Ghostface album's do: the rapper's obsessively detailed, edge-of-the-seat storytelling. Althought they usually end in climax instead of gunfire, Ghost brings the same urgency to these sex jams as he does his trademark crime narratives.
