Ghostface Killah – Fishscale

Rumor is that track 24 was made for the Biggie Duets but did not make the final cut.

ghostface latest album is very different from his recent Pretty Tony album. The overall sound is faster, the Soul sampes are still there, but mostly used in a different way than before. The Lyrics are obsessed with Crack. From the cover that shows Coke stashed in Fish, cleaned out by night by Tony Starks it takes only 3 Cuts till the first Song about Cocaine Dealing comes along. KILO. "A KIlo is a 1.000 Gramms" Raekwon helps delivering the chrous to this upbeat anthem, that was the first Singles to Fishscale. The next and even better Track about Crack comes with Cut Number 9. Crackspot: Here he tells about an incident where "Tony Starks bought 10 pounds of Raw Fishscale from a local drug Czar while being in Bolivia" . From there he takes the listeners along to a Stash Room in NYC where he cooked Crack, uncut and hangs out together with Raekwon and the heavily Coke sniffing ODB. He hands out a free hit of uncut Crack to a local basehead, who aready brought TV's, Playstations etc. to him to get more Crack. Ater one hit he falls down on the table and seems to be dead. Now everybody gets paranoid and the guilti-consciouseness come in. How tell this to his wife etc. Fear of Undercover Cops hanging around the house etc. I really wonder why Ghost talks about such intimate and forbidden deeds. Maybe he wanted to get rid of the memories ?
Who knows if this story really happened like that ?
It sounds very realistic and makes listening to The Fishscale very interesting. What freaks me the most though are the beats on it. 5 trax by Metal Fingers Doom aka M.F. Doom, 3 fat old school beats by Pete Rock show the extreme poles between the production of this album. Best Trax musically is "Back Like " Neyo and the Pete Rock produced "Be Easy". The use of drums makes this beat so dope.
J Dilla laces Fishscale with beats for 2 dope Trax.
Most impressive is "Whip You With A Strap", a typically slow ballad with heavy Soul Samples Ghost's of his childhood in the 70ies.
24 Trax (minus 4 Skits) leave a lot of room for Ghostface's delivery. Overall ishscale is a dope album, but the extreme sounds and host's delivery make it hard to listen to it just fo fun. If you don't follow his delivery Fishscale can get annoying. No Party or Feel Good Material in sight.