If Lil Jon could ice his cup, I'd chop that shit and ice my nuts

Man of the Year

It's pretty much an indisputable fact that Ghostface Killah is the man of the year. Who else rejected the design for his own doll? Who else released not one but two potentially classic albums? Who else makes random shit (see below) sound so damn great? (J Dilla might qualify, if you replace "doll" with "New Era cap," but dude, as I've eulogized so much before, is dead.) The way that Ghostface dominated this year (well, critically if not actually commerically) gave us all hope for the Future of Hip-Hop and, furthermore, the return of truly dope shit to the forefront of the culture. By "truly dope," I'm thinking of Pete Rock's production on "Be Easy" which should have been released as a summer and not fall/winter single or Just Blaze's ferocious and oh-so-confident stewardship of the NY Sound (tm) on "The Champ" or Dilla's posthumous involvement in Fishscale or the presence of Madlib and MF DOOM on More Fish and Fishscale.

In a sense, Ghostface represents a bridge from the so called underground to the mainstream. Those are nebulous (and perhaps meaningless) terms (like the old conscious-ignant divide) and, as so many people have said, the true dichotomy should be between dope and wack. (The dualities though still have currency in the discourse about hip-hop, both internal and external.) But, in any case, what I mean to say when I invoke those words is that Ghostface, through Def Jam, is bringing subterranean dudes like Madlib and DOOM and Dilla in touch with listeners who might otherwise ignore or avoid them, for whatever reason. And, it seems as if Ghostface is only doing this because the dude wants to make the dopest shit possible and stuff that needs to be heard - otherwise, why would he be putting out an album (tentatively, after hearing one song, I've already pencilled in as the best album of 2008) with MF DOOM on Lex (Warp Records' subsidiary)?

Of course, all this has been a trope running through much of the Wu-Tang Clan's decade-plus history. That is, sure they put out a bunch of hits and sold a lot of fucking rekkids in their prime, but their music was always anti-pop (and not in the Beans/Consortium manner) if you consider the RZA's claustrophobic, sample-heavy (and what weird samples too) textures and the 9 super-emcees climbing over each other to spit the best verses possible. We should think here about Ghostface's epic stuggle with Raekwon for lyrical supremacy in the mid 90s onwards, Inspectah Deck's curious penchant to consistently steal tracks, the GZA's impossibly great flow, Method Man's charisma and hunger at his peak, U-God's anger, Masta Killa's I'm-trying-really-hard-to-keep-up ethos, the RZA's off-time falling-behind-the-beat cadence, and ODB's absolute genius. All of these talents and drives battled each other in a sort of tangled fellowship of dope art that can be found in abundance on 36 Chambers, Wu-Tang Forever (yeah, dudes, this was the best double LP in hip-hop history) and even the supremely underrated The W.



Finally: Ghostface soldiers on in this tradition while the rest of the Wu either have disappeared (where the fuck is Rebel INS or the RZA's beats or U-God?) or died (RIP ODB) or lost confidence (Method Man) or are now working along the same path but in obscurity (Masta Killa, Cappadonna). Thus, Ghostface is the Man of the Year because he has taken on the legacy of the Wu without being weighted down by it. Instead, he has taken it further and carried it past its possible irrelevance and now into the future. Will 1993 ever come again? You would have to think that the RZA's disappearance (at least beat-wise) would seem to signify a return to the basement and perhaps the birth of a new and revolutionary sound. We can only hope he drops the revolution before snap (or whatever) develops into something meaningful.

Listening to: Ghostface Killah - Block Rock (Produced by Madlib)