While the rap world gushes at all the radio singles and boastful colorful culture that hip hop has morphed into far from the b-boy and park jams, Ghostface Killah manages to show and prove why he’s one of the “Apollo Kids”. And if the title does sound familiar it’s because it was the lead single with Raekwon off of Ghost’s stellar second effort that today is considered a classic, “Supreme Clientele”. And while some can complain that Ghost’s last effort was too experiemental and all that stuff with the R&B wasn’t needed if you look at how dope “Ghost Dini” was and what it took to make a brave album like that then your not hearing what dope rap sounds like.


When you jump off an album like Ghost did with this with the Frank Dukes Produced “Purified Thoughts” featuring GZA & Killah Priest all murking the track with Wu-isms and lyrics that a purified thoughts that cannot be bought just absorbed. And this album is filled with guests some expected like Method Man, Raekwon, Cappadonna, Trife, Wiggs, GZA and Killah Priest to some unexpected like Black Thought, Jim Jones, The Game & Joell Ortiz, bu all in all the album works because Ghost beastly flows, hard rhymes, ear for production all make the album work like an well oiled machine.

Even though it’s a too short album with not enough of solo Ghostface for this listener, it still has hard rhymes on tracks like “How You Like it Baby”, “Together Baby”, Starkology” to even the hard knock beat thumping punishing rhymes and lines on the four Wu-Featured “Trouble Makers”, “Ghetto”, “Black Tequila” and the aforedmentioned “Purfied Thoughts” all bring Ghost’s dopeness out all while still doing what he does best and it shows.


One of strong points of the album is the production and how it all vibed and gelled together, and again this is showing Ghost’s A&R skills as with a lot of his previous efforts and if you look how well done “Wu-Massacre” was done, then it should be no shock in how good this album sounds. But on of the flaws from a short album with heavy features is not enough solo stuff and one of the tracks I felt was dope but should have been a solo was “Handcuffing them Hoes” featuring Jim Jones, it just felt like it didn’t fit the mix of the album with him on the vocals. Overall this album is a hard 4 out of 5 even with the blemishes, you can scratch out the flaws and put this album on consistent rotation a few times and never get tired of it.

Rating: 4 out of 5