Earth Lessons: Ghostface Killah’s ‘Ironman’ Turns 30

First, some beef needs to be addressed. 

Accurately or not, my understanding of Wu-Tang hierarchy growing up was that Method Man and Ol’ Dirty Bastard were major pop icons, the ones you’d see on TV, Raekwon and Genius/GZA the critical favorites, RZA the increasingly psychedelic ringleader, and the other guys the other guys.

The trajectory I’ve always been sold is that Ghostface Killah was good and respected, but only came into his own (or at least received his due) once everyone else was waning, and 2000’s Supreme Clientele boosted his own mythos as his teammates were running out of gas, which kicked off a string of critically and moderately commercially successful follow-ups throughout the 2000s that no other Clan members experienced. Right? Ghostface’s 1996 solo debut Ironman, while considered very-good to minor-classic depending on who you ask, still tends to exist in Clientele’s shadow, as well as that of Liquid Swords and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. (It just misses the top five on Complex’s Top 20 Wu-Tang Albums ranking.) Head over to Clientele’s Wikipedia page and you’ll find a long list of accolades listing Ghost’s sophomore effort as one of the best rap albums of its decade and/or all-time. Supreme Clientele is great. This beef is not with Supreme Clientele.

 

VIDEO: Ghostface Killah “Camay”

This is about Ghostface not performing a single cut from his golden-era solo work when I caught the final Wu-Tang tour while Liquid Swords and Cuban Linx were represented by, like, four songs apiece. Now, I am sure he wasn’t denied a request; he is lazy in his elder statesman chapter. I once waited out a three-hour delay to get him on the phone for 11 bored minutes, easily the most disappointed I’ve ever been by a musical idol, and he’s barely made a good album in 17 years, much less a great one. It would be a reach for me to suspect some kind of bitterness, but I think it’s fair to surmise he feels a disconnect from his peers. I always figured Ghost’s heyday was slightly out of time from theirs, but it turns out Ironman, along with Method Man’s actually (and justly) forgotten Tical 2000: Judgment Day, was out the gate the highest-charting Wu solo album ever at No. 2, and even among group efforts only 1997’s wildly anticipated double Wu-Tang Forever secured the top spot. (Even more surprising, the fourth-highest-charting was unofficial tenth Beatle Cappadonna’s The Pillage, which went to No. 3.)

I’ve never thought about Ghostface in the context of being too commercial before — never forget that Q-Tip’s crossover “sellout” Amplified was entirely helmed by fucking J. Dilla —  though it’s possible his tear-stained debut single, “All That I Got Is You,” graced by Mary J. Blige and not a speck of bravado, contributed to his delayed critical hosannas. (Though only Touré had enough clout to push a four-star Wu review past Jann Wenner before 1998.) At the very least, it makes a little more sense why the stream-of-consciousness dreamflow of Supreme Clientele is positioned as an underdog against normier forces.

Tony Starks’ R&B affectations, vintage, “tasteful” or not, were not considered as cool as GZA’s weirdo lo-fi or Raekwon’s mafioso machinations. Method Man and ODB had hits with R&B and pop singers, but they represented a subversion of the charts; the latter especially was treated as an antidote to Mariah Carey who took the piss out of her Star Search spotlessness. Maybe the heads didn’t fully know what to do with this guy who just incorporated a lot of soul crooning because he liked it, not because he was chasing hits. They liked him, but he wasn’t changing lives on his debut album like some of his peers.

All of this quantifying and qualifying is to say that Ironman, which turns 30 today, may well be the greatest Wu-Tang album of all-time. There’s no question it would be a Ghostface LP (sorry GZArds), and I’ve spent most of the last two decades proselytizing about Fishscale, with which I’ve had a love affair since college. But here’s where I admit I’ve returned to Ironman more than any other Wu record, including Fishscale and Clientele combined, since my 30s. At the very least, this is a plea to boost its place in the canon. It’s the golden age contribution of the Clan’s best rapper with unexpected commercial legs, come on!

 

VIDEO: Ghostface Killah feat. Mary J. Blige “All That I Got Is You”

It’s emo for one thing, which is not the same thing as tender. “All That I Got Is You” may have been the first and most radio-ready of Ghost’s childhood remembrances, from “Child’s Play” to “Whip You With a Strap,” but sappy it’s not. At his family’s economic lowest, he did not want to share a bed with Jon-Jon, who peed it. They picked roaches out their cereal and shared a spoon. Newspaper was toilet paper. This was not a hard upbringing being glorified to look tough, this was the memorized trauma of a child mortified he had to ask a neighbor to “borrow” food. And it was the crossover track that took Ironman platinum.

Then there’s “Wildflower,” which beat not just Drake but Eminem to pouring his heart out in embarrassing rage on the woman in his crosshairs who dared fuck someone else while he also cheated. But not even Biggie at his most morally conflicted came up with poesy about his mistress sipping Yoo-Hoo or having sex on a chair with three legs. Not only does he not convince the listener “my dick’s the bomb, baby” but I think even he knows that’s the point. “Wildflower” is one of hip-hop’s most breathtaking tirades ever, a portrait of manhood questioned and crashing out at its most vulnerable and ugly, with all the layered tonality of a movie in the process. How does anyone not laugh trying to picture what he meant calling the other man a “lobster head-ass” in disgust? If Ghost didn’t then, he must know now that he didn’t have to “teach” this woman to “eat the right foods” or “watch flicks by DeNiro.” He’s painting a narrator pathetically mining for his own accomplishments in this relationship, and it’s where his impressionism ascends to something greater and wholer than poesy. No one else could have described their torrid affair as her “biting on my cables.” No one else could have indignantly charged, “I gave you Earth lessons!” Maybe Elon Musk, in broken English.

 

AUDIO: Ghostface Killah feat. Raekwon and Cappadonna “Daytona 500”

Ironman is by no means subtle; it rip-roars to life with “Iron Maiden,” which should be considered in the conversation of greatest side-one track-ones ever. One of the most uptempo and action-packed pieces of music in the Wu-Tang discography, it splays sirens, spy themes, and barrio horn blats colliding like urban intersections while Ghost breathlessly swallows raw eggs, smacks jurors, and leaves the “Winnebago unstable.” But its complexity of tone continues to unravel decades after it properly introduced rap’s best writer (“writer” isn’t necessarily the same as “rapper”). Raekwon’s “Ice Cream” was the closest thing Wu-Tang ever had to a feel-good summer anthem the year prior, but “Camay” here mesmerizes with its menacing tone (“seen you workin’ at a law firm on Fifth Avenue / three blocks from the Gucci spot is where I trapped you”), climaxing with Ghost practically grunting for this poor woman to cook him baked macaroni and turkey wings before his riot of a complimentary mic-drop: “your backyard speak with thunder!”

RZA’s most frenetic production ever matches the star’s zest for fractured but memorable phrasing, with four windchime notes on “The Faster Blade” and a snakecharming sample on “Marvel” and a sproingy car-chase guitar riff on “Daytona 500” subbing for hooks. Maybe it’s too immediate. Maybe stoners can’t vibe to it. Maybe the needlepoint lyrical-musical continuum is too busy for dorm-room (or for that matter, street corner) interpretation. Maybe this lane of “gangsta” wouldn’t be pried opened so wide and artfully until The Wire years later.

Maybe Ghostface simply wasn’t an outsized enough personality off wax to earn his full spotlight until the novelty of his nine-man band wore off in the 2000s. But Ironman has a long overdue claim to its very peak, and he’d spend the next decade-plus as the genre’s reigning champ.