A publicity image from Ghostface Killah.
Ghostface Killah's description of ending his banishment from Canada is appropriately dark.
"It's like comin' home after doing 17 years or whatever," the Wu-Tang Clan co-founder says on the phone from New York, comparing his absence to a prison term. In fact, the last time he performed north of the border was 1996. "So to go back and embrace the fans that love me and the ones that I love…" He pauses. "It's gonna be real nice, yo."
Ghostface was blocked from re-entering Canada because of his criminal record – including a four-month prison stint in 1999 for attempted robbery (he told MTV the jail time made him a "better man"). Now that he's settled the Canada Customs and Immigration rehabilitation paperwork, Ghostface will finally follow up his last Canadian appearance with a timely tour. Next year is the 20th anniversary of the group's first single, Protect Ya Neck, the beginning of a movement that would change the music business forever.
The nine-member rap collective blew a W-shaped hole in popular culture with Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), released in 1993, and followed it with a barrage of million-selling solo albums, movies and video games. Crews were common in hip-hop, but none had ever branded both their music and their merchandise as though they were a blockbuster movie franchise.
The group's line of Wu-Wear was a particularly innovative strategy, expanding the business of selling a few T-shirts at shows into a clothing empire distributed at major retail outlets like Macy's – success that spurred Jay-Z and Diddy to create their own fashion brands. Those rappers also created their own crews and marketed them along similar lines; Diddy's Bad Boy stable, including Notorious B.I.G. and Mase, went on to rule the charts in the late '90s, all while sporting his Sean John apparel in their videos.
To this day, Ghostface is still killing – with microphones, that is. "We out there. We got brothers out there in the trenches, still doin' it. It's sort of like being an old gunslinger, nahmean? He go pull his gun out, the lesson's about to be on. Twenty years down the line, that same gun still work."
Ghostface's verses are uncannily detailed, like the one in The Heart Gently Weeps, where he depicts an ambush in a pharmacy, complete with vivid images of bullets flying through Clorox bottles. The Wu-Tang nurture a mystique around their past misadventures, but Ghostface happily talks about his early days in the notorious Stapleton housing projects on Staten Island. Born Dennis Coles in 1970, Ghostface met Divine – the Wu-Tang's eventual co-manager – during a teenage prison stint for robbery. Divine's brother RZA became the mastermind behind the group's era-defining beats and business strategy.
"RZA was livin' in Park Hill, five minutes away from my project; then he moved down to Stapleton," the rapper explains. "He had an apartment, yo, so we were just chillin'. We was up late nights writing rhymes – boom, boom, boom – so we were sleepin' on the couch. Next day, do the same thing, just crashing. We just tried to start walking dogs [getting ahead] We had to do it for ourselves, and RZA made it happen."
Though the Wu's output has been uneven, a new spirit was injected into their bloodstream with the success of 2009's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II, fellow co-founder Raekwon's sequel to his 1995 magnum opus (Ghostface was heavily involved on both discs). Cuban Linx II was hailed as a cinematic experience; on Ghostface's next solo album (one of his three upcoming releases, including collaborations with rap legends D-Block and Doom), he'll focus on the Wu's famously rich between-song dialogue. The skits on the original Cuban Linx album popularized impenetrable drug slang like "flipping cake" (selling crack) and having a "connect" (drug supplier) and made both organized-crime stories, and album-length narratives, a staple of the genre.
"The hardest thing is getting the skits together, because the skits are like the decoration to me, you can make it feel a certain kind of way," Ghostface says. "The songs are the songs, nahmean? I don't got a problem with choosing the right beats. It's just, to me, it's the skits that came alive when you heard [the first] Cuban Linx. The music I'm not worried about."
Labels may yet be a hurdle. Ghostface's recent releases have been poorly marketed; 2010's Apollo Kids was intended as a mixtape but became an album to finish his contract with Def Jam. "I don't really like the Internet, but if the label ain't doin' it, you gotta do it yourself. Hopefully your fan base sticks by you.
"I believe that 2012 is going to be a very good year," he says. "Hopefully we got the promotion and people so we can stand firm on it. I'm tired of bearing fruit without squeezing it, you know? I could drop an album but it's like, once you squeeze it, the world's gotta taste it."
Whatever happens, the 20th anniversary of the Wu will be a party that no eighties baby dares miss.
"Oh, we ain't even talk about that yet," he murmurs, savouring the idea. "That's gonna be crazy."
Ghostface Killah with Killah Priest, Sheek Louch and Peter Jackson plays Club Soda in Montreal on Nov. 27, Toronto on Dec. 2, and 14 other Canadian cities through Dec. 13. See www.peterjacksonmusic.ca for full schedule.
Business lessons from the Wu
Wu-Tang Clan
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993)
The group's first album was a platinum-selling hip-hop classic, making stars out of the marquee rappers and, more importantly, serving as a powerful asset in negotiating their solo record deals.
Ghostface Killah
Ironman (1996)
Ghostface and other band members bucked industry practice by signing with different record labels, creating the diversified model that groups like Odd Future would later profit from. Ironman went platinum, as did Method Man's disc Tical; three other Wu debuts went gold.
Raekwon
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II (2009)
After floundering commercially, Wu members picked up a trick from Hollywood: the art of the sequel. Raekwon's Cuban Linx… Pt. II sold 68,000 copies in its first week alone, debuting at No. 4 on the Billboard charts.