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Crushed Out Heavenly

Ghostface speaks on The King of NY, the war in Iraq and thugs on computers.

by Douglas Passion | 2005.03.28

What can we say about Ghostface that we haven't said before? We fawningly review every album the Wu-Tang clansman chefs up. We quote his culinary-based linguistics while yanking ravioli bags out of the freezer at Pathmark. And we all wish we possessed the gusto to sport a massive golden eagle on our forearm. Without further elaboration, here's Tony.

You’re extremely popular on the Internet. You had a line about being “thugs on computers” – do you read what people are saying about you online?

“Thugs on…?” What song was that? Which album was that?

It was off Bulletproof Wallets.

Um-hmm.

Do you go online and read what people say about your stuff?

Oh, nah, nah, nah. You took it wrong and shit. That was just in the hook when I was like ‘thugs on the computer…some shit…something in Bermuda…we laptop niggas, thugs on the computer.’ We didn’t say nothing ‘bout no rhymes and shit. Just on the computer, you know, you laptop niggas – you still a smart nigga.

I’ve seen people go through and analyze each lyrics on ‘Nutmeg’ and songs you’ve described as ‘Rubik’s Cubes’. Not of lot of Hip-Hop inspires interpretation.

Those are just styles right there. I could make a song that don’t mean nothing from nothing – just a bunch of words that don’t mean shit but it’s just how you just flip it and bounce it over beats and shit. And that’s it. Ghost just threw it out. I don’t give a fuck. Fuck it. As long as I know what I talking about – or even if it didn’t make sense to me – it’s like fuck it, I was the first one to do it. Like I just rhymed over the Delphonics for the ‘Holla’ track with the vocals on it. I did that because I always wanted to do that track but I didn’t have the chance to get the instrumental – so I wrote it over they vocals. I felt comfortable singing it over vocals anyway. Nobody do shit like that – they get fucked up by the niggas’ vocals like ‘nah, I can’t rhyme ‘cause they singing’.

Do you think people put creativity in Hip-Hop secondary to selling records these days?

Oh, yeah. At the same time, it’s a whole new generation of gods out here. They don’t really know about the artistic shit and all the other shit. They don’t know which way to go about it. They just get the beat and lay the vocals down – they don’t know how to paint the walls and decorate the apartment.

Are there any new cats outside of Theodore that you’re feeling these days?

Not too many. It’s like, my Theodore niggas got that street shit, but it’s just a balance. You always gotta keep a balance – everything can’t just be good, you gotta have some stuff that’s negative too. Someone’s a humble person, but when it’s time for war, where your warriors at? I keep some of that shit in me too. Since Cuban Linx, I been street. I been talking that gangster shit, that street shit, that other shit. But I like to keep it moving. A real master is one that leaves his footprints there but keeps moving. Don’t gotta stand there and get stuck in it. That’s how I am about rap music. I like to keep it moving. What goes around comes around. I’m trying to elevate in every album I do – I’m trying to step my game up.

You added multiple syllables, you started fucking around with the hooks more, doing more stuff to go along with the music.

Exactly. I love R. Kelly, I love Missy -- even 50 Cent was good with his hooks. I learn from people – I watch different techniques like ‘okay, damn, I’m missing choruses, I’m missing my little hooks.’ So that’s what I gotta do to step my shit up. All right, ‘boom’, so I’ll do the hook. R. Kelly likes to sing about certain shit that make you see the shit and feel it and shit. Bitches love him. I guess that’s through him painting his picture. So that’s where I be painting my pictures and shit, where I be writing my little shit. So it’s like ‘boom’. Missy’s creative, so you know, I’m an old school nigga but I’m still learning.

Tell me about the ‘crying flow’. That’s one of your more distinctive styles -- how did it come about?

See, niggas gave it the name ‘crying flow’. That’s my old soul flow right there. I always had that in me but I just never put the shit on record until I did ‘Impossible’ where I was like ‘call the ambulance, Annie been shot’. I just started picking it up and putting it in there. And then I did ‘I Can’t Go to Sleep’ and even a little bit of ‘Holla’.

People enjoy that you put so much emotion into it.

I like to be creative, I think to keep Hip-Hop at its essence. It evolves though, but it’s going come back around. If not, I’m always going to be here to rep it.

How do you feel about the whole ‘King of New York’ debate? Is that important to you?

It’s not important to me at all. I don’t give a fuck who’s the king of New York. God is the king of everything. Nobody can rate me but God. It’s whatever. It’s all a blessing, it’s all that…but I want to be the best at what I can do. You can’t say that Marvin Gaye was better than Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder. They all was great guys and they all had different flows and all that shit. You can’t never say who’s really best. It’s the same thing with the guys that’s out there emceeing.

You’ve had a lot of 5-percent rhetoric in your rhymes – what is your religious status?

Ain’t nothing. I deal with Islam. Islam is peace, that’s one who submits. That’s like the first religion ever that was placed upon us – we was born into Islam, everyone of us, either you white, black to purple. Since you were in your mother’s womb, in her stomach, you was submitting without you even knowing. As time goes on, man comes with a lot of different other shit in the game. That’s why we fucked up right now – we’re not in our original state. I like to take it back to it’s original foundation and since Islam is the biggest religion out of all – because it was the first – you got Russian niggas that was Muslim, Chinese Muslims, Indians. They say Buddha was Muslim and went over to India and started teaching Buddhism. And all that shit is older that Christianity. We are really all Muslims.

As a Muslim and someone who said ‘Mr. Bush, sit down, let me handle the war’, what’s your opinion on the things going on in the Middle East?

As Americans, what’s going on over there is really none of our business. Us, being in the USA, we like the biggest selfish motherfuckers in all reality – [from] Hiroshima to all other small countries that we ran in and took over and invaded and did all that shit. You gotta remember the media is only going to show you what they want to show you. We stuff behind the TV and we feed off of everything they show us and that’s where we get our information from. If there wasn’t no TV we wouldn’t have no information on what the fuck was going on. So we’re being fed this – it’s the same thing like school. When they ran in there they set the oil tanks up to go ahead and start sucking all the oil from out of there – but I thought you were going in there to find weapons of mass destruction? They did the best heist in history, but they televised it. People didn’t catch it as being a heist because they don’t really know what the fuck time it is. They just thought ‘oh, they going good, they shooting Saddam’s people, they killing over there.’ Nah. And who the fuck to say Saddam had something to do with 9-11? I thought the focus was on bin Laden – that’s if he did it. I’m not even sure he even did it. That’s what you just tell us. As far I was concerned, I thought y’all niggas did business with bin Laden and he dropped the bomb on Russia over there for the United States. Bush’s father did business with bin Laden – you could’ve fronted on his money! You never know. At the same time, 5,000 Jews ain’t go to work. How the fuck 5,000 Jews ain’t go to work on that day? But yet, America stick up for the Jews – they got me thinking like, damn, hold on, maybe we the ones that did that shit just to put the New World Order into order.

You’re obviously a politically savvy cat – why doesn’t more of this stuff find its way into your current music?

I speak about it, maybe not on the album right there. It’s certain things, man, it’s like certain shit, unless we all ready to pop off, that you leave alone. You don’t even talk about the shit unless you want CIA niggas at your fucking door like ‘you giving too much information up.’ That don’t stop the kid though, but my mind’s on other shit right now and shit.

In general, that seems to be the case with most rappers.

We not as strong as we used to be back in the days. We don’t even stick together. Nobody don’t give a fuck about nothing and don’t care about nothing. And if they do, they be the first to be like ‘oh, what can we do? We can’t do nothing about it’. In all reality, we could do something about it but we always take the easy way out. Back in the days you had Black Panthers and Malcolm X – niggas was strong. Niggas would fuck around and march with you. These motherfuckers don’t want to go to jail and they don’t want to get killed. We gotta start learning how to stand for something because we’ll fall for everything. You can shoot [Amadou] Diallo 41 times and nothing happens -- you can stick a plunger up [Abner] Louima’s ass and rupture his spleen and we don’t do nothing. It’s like, yo, man, we’re not as strong as we used to be. The world is getting worse.

From your style -- the medallions, the breakbeat, the furry Kangols – it seems like the ‘80s were a period you cherished.

It was a good era. I’d like to bring those days back, in a sense. You can never bring it back, but I feel like that’s when Hip-Hop was at its best. Guns wasn’t that heavy and crack had just hit the scene a couple years before that. It was a lot better -- you walked outside and it felt better than you feel nowadays, especially being up in New York. That’s was just a phase that we had went through. We gotta at least be alert about were he headed. We headed for some real self-destruction shit, just like how KRS and ‘em were saying back in the days.

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