We are not one dimensional. I’ll occasionally write about music here; in this case to review a 2015 album I didn’t even know existed until a couple weeks ago:
Sour Soul, a hip hop-jazz collaboration between rapper Ghostface Killah and instrumental band BADBADNOTGOOD.
Unless you’ve really been under a musical rock for three decades, you’ve heard of Ghostface Killah, the most prolific and consistently excellent of the Wu Tang Clan’s extensive MC stable. Ghost’s skills, raw at first, quickly outstripped his bulletproof back story: Ironman began his career wearing a mask in public and on album covers because he was wanted for armed robbery (among other malfeasance). That case both interfered with and influenced his artistic growth; an eventual bid on Riker’s Island helped shape production of his magnum opus, Supreme Clientele (2000).
BADBADNOTGOOD is a trio^ of young white Canadians who make an eclectic mix of instrumental music spanning soul, hip hop, electronica, funk and rock—but ultimately rooted in jazz. As drummer Alexander Sowinski explained, BBNG do not pretend to make jazz per se, but rather seek constant exploration of different genres while “approaching music with jazz training.” You will not find big, sprawling solos or odd time signatures in their music. It’s primarily drums, bass (Chester Hansen), and keys (Matthew Taveras), supplemented on this record by guitar, strings, horns and vibes courtesy of a killer group of contributors—operating almost exclusively in 4/4 time.
BBNG often use samplers and studio production to shape their overall sound, but unlike many jazz rap records, they are not content to merely recreate the loop-like beats that predominate traditional hip hop. It is almost a nouveau fusion—in addition to traditional genres, there’s palpable rap and indie R&B influences across their work. (All of which I recommend, especially 2016’s IV).
So on Sour Soul we have a marriage between an aging, true “gangsta” rap legend from Staten Island—whose stream of consciousness verses often depicted scenes of ultraviolence and drug dealing in the projects—and three white, early 20-something Toronto suburbanites who had successfully merged, if not mastered, various strains of Black music. It works better than one might expect.
^BBNG have had changes in personnel, becoming a quartet in 2016, then a trio again in 2019
Ghost’s characteristic lyrical fury still burns, though here he is wiser and noticeably mellowed; perhaps by age, perhaps by his growing relationship to the Islamic faith. The bars now are less malicious and louche in content, and less frenzied with absurdist, rococo detail than at his peak on Ironman and Supreme Clientele. But the experience of him, the excitable voice and violently galloping cadence—that’s still present, if a bit throttled down from his heyday. The attention to non sequitur minutiae that once kept us on our intellectual toes, and which made him one of the most inimitable street poets in rap history, isn’t quite up to his formerly lofty standards. There’s no “Nutmeg” here. Still, Sour Soul isn’t music to soundtrack a nap on the river.
Thematically, there’s a push-pull between the man Ghost was and who he now strives to be. In many ways, intentional or not, it reads like a concept album, with lyrics expressing signature bravado, mischievous interludes, and ultimately, pleas for salvation.
At the beginning this is no reformed sinner; the album title and eponymous track attest to that. Traces of prime Toney Starks mingle with a more contemplative Ghostface, creating a natural, dramatic tension. The opener outlines the battle of these opposing forces, beginning: “Yo, cleanse me, clean me of my sour soul, I'm vicious;” followed by a rejection of salvation (“they can’t feed me food for thought, I won’t budge I’m a twisted individual”); and ends, as if he can’t help himself, with a more typical, hilariously depraved lyrical concoction that erstwhile armed robber would fully endorse:
You can't fuck with me nigga, this is one-on-one
With the strength of ten midgets I'mma murder you son
It’s psychotically sublime (at least at times), in no small part because under Ghost’s conflicted growl, the BADBADNOTGOOD boys create an organic, analog late 60s R&B backing. Again, they don’t resort to mimicking a looped sample; it doesn’t take close listening to detect little filigrees, an extra bass note or drum fillip, drawing from an almost impressionistic palette of old soul and fusion records.
Elsewhere, BBNG create cinematic soundscapes, as on the instrumental “Stark’s Reality.” With assistance from producer Frank Dukes on vibraphone and other contributing musicians from the soul revival scene, they introduce strings over a languorous beat and loopy bass line. Here and on “Tone’s Rap” one detects flecks of Morricone’s spaghetti western soundtracks, trip hop, and Blaxploitation flicks. Instrumentally it all meshes wonderfully well.
Sour Soul features a few cameos as Ghostface makes detours along the road to enlightenment, the finest being Tree rapping like a doomed elder about projects life on “Street Knowledge,” while the most enjoyable comes courtesy of fellow mask-fitted emcee MF Doom’s appearance on “Ray Gun.” There’s nothing particularly noteworthy in Ghost’s or Doom’s verses (beyond the base joy of hearing these two legends back to back). However, the song is constructed almost like a jazz number: Ghost solo, Doom solo, then a complete change in the backing track, from a fun, funky, propulsive beat to a big, minor key, descending coda that recalls Badalamenti’s work on Twin Peaks. Everyone gets their spotlight turn.
The next and final vocal tracks, “Nuggets of Wisdom” and “Food,” reveal a man that the masked marauder of the 90s would hardly recognize. As BBNG craft pacific, serene soundscapes behind him, Ghost raps about positivity, the salutary effects of the sun, and his intermittent reformation (“I used to rob and steal, now I make food for thought”—note the callback to the opener, the “twisted individual” then rejecting this notion). As the record began, with a plea to be cleansed, so it ends with hallmarks of spiritual growth. Take a gander at the lyrics to “Nuggets”; if I told you this was from a Native Tongues song from 1990 (eg, Tribe or De La Soul), you’d hardly flinch:
It’s no longer protect your neck, but protect your soul.
No one seemed to regard Sour Soul as a concept album. It generally received a “fair” or 7/10 type score from the various rating sites. But there’s a conceptual through line here, a bit of a Pilgrim’s Progress (in White terms). Ghostface has taken many menacing back alleys, provoked by his own criminality and a corrupt industry, and stands now on spiritual principles, even while falling into his own Slough of Despair along the way (“[sprinkling] coke in the dust blunt to spice up your greens,” i.e., hooking his weed customers on cocaine and angel dust, on the mid-album “Street Knowledge”). Does this conceptual quality, which is carried out with coherent aplomb, make Sour Soul a success, a classic? I’d vote “yea” to the former at least. But the lyrical decline, the dulling of once-razor sharp, maniacal observation, prevents the latter status.
This wasn’t the first time Dennis Coles (his real name) pondered the value of overcoming challenges to emerge a better man. As he once confided to an interviewer around the time of Supreme Clientele’s release in 2000—just after his Islamic conversion—regarding the bid on Riker’s for that alleged armed robbery:
“That’s the science of going through hell and having to come out right—because everybody gots to go through hell to come out right.”
BBNG, the young and gifted architects who soundtrack this journey, probably hadn’t “gone through hell,” at least not in ways both colorful and public at which we all might wag a finger. They nonetheless ensure that even if Ghost’s lines lack some of their formerly supercharged detail, and even if you’re not paying close attention to the thematic arc here, you will almost certainly enjoy a musical ride that does indeed come out right.*
Producer: Frank Dukes (and vibraphone)
Additional production: BADBADNOTGOOD
Engineer: Wayne Gordon (Daptone Records)
Additional instrumentation: Leland Whitty^ (sax, viola), The Budos Band, Tommy Brenneck (guitar, track 4), River Tiber (cello, violin, trombone, guitar, organ)
Label: Lex Records
*Lex, BBNG & Ghostface released the standalone backing tracks as a separate, companion album later in 2015, entitled simply Sour Soul (Instrumentals).
^Whitty, a frequent collaborator, formally joined BBNG in 2016 (the fourth member for the record IV)