28. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale

Authenticity in writing is not necessarily based on one's personal experience, but the willingness of an author to bring real emotion to the fictional lives they put on paper.

A common misconception of the hip-hop songwriter is that they're constantly speaking from their own perspective, cataloging their life experience in diary form, avoiding creative license and the occasional white lie. Not only does this fallacy give the impression that rappers are all egotistical materialists (though some certainly are), it paints them into a corner artistically, forcing them to "keep it real," in lieu of making it innovative.

Ghostface Killah has always put the composition before the image, treating Fishscale more like a compilation of short fictions than a commercial rap record. A willingness to indulge artistic flourishes has yielded the richest of character development, breathing life into the paranoid crack dealers, septuagenarian assassins and strung-out strippers that occupy the dark alleys of Ghost's noir-influenced street poetry. Through these minute details, Ghost has created a body of work that demands attentive listening, packed to the gills with the subtle footnotes and cultural references that beg for an annotated dictionary and scholarly attention.

What makes these words so worthy of dissection and different from the work of contemporaries is the ambiguity of the narrator. Moving from a gritty tale about an agitator getting fitted for false teeth to an unflinching look at memories of childhood abuse, Ghost is capable of playing the audiences' emotions like a master manipulator, particularly by giving the impression that he may have doled out or received the aforementioned beatings. The actuality is besides the point, especially in relation to his talents as an author. What does matter is his ability to envelop us in the mood and setting of a story and shade in enough detail to make each lick of the belt sting as much for us as it does for the protagonist.

His production team wisely saw the vivid, filmic quality of his prose and backed it with the heavy bass lines, blaring horns and squealing guitar solos synonymous with 70's Blaxploitation cinema. Despite a legion of producers on hand, there's a water-tight continuity to the piece as a whole and the sound never deviates from the theme, despite mild tonal shifts and the occasional surreal passage. High-profile beat conductors like MF Doom, Pete Rock and J Dilla all step up with multiple entries, but politely give Ghost most of the spotlight, backing him with a combative drum kick when he's aggressive or the angst-ridden wail of female vocals when he's feeling introspective.

One such moment is "Beauty Jackson," which finds Ghost pouring over the female form, while Dilla repeats and repositions keys elements of Philly Soul by way of The Three Degrees "Maybe." As swirling strings and a quick snippet of downtrodden bass fidget and repeat endlessly, Ghost reminisces about a bus stop belle, capable of turning heads with just the puff of a cigarette or the downwind scent of her perfume. Every aspect of her look and personality are fetishized, rolled up in an eloquent stream of superlatives that note a cute birth mark, name check the Cover Girl lipstick and express genuine surprise when she actually listens to the petty advances. He daydreams of every jealous passerby, disappointed by their inattentive spouse and dated fashion sense. He even briefly lets his guard down, only to accidentally drop his handgun from his waist, sending his object of affection running for the bus.

If this story is pure fiction, Ghostface may be subconsciously exhibiting embarrassment about his early dalliances with a life of crime and depicting the common public perception of criminal offenders. Showing vulnerability and regret is beyond rare for songwriters, but unprecedented for a rapper. On Fishscale, Ghost broadens the scope of what it means to be a storyteller and MC, birthing an expansive fictional world constructed from bits of his real life, further shaded in by a versatile wordsmith far too talented to be sequestered to the ghetto of "real" MCs.

29. Quasimoto - The Unseen

Under a plume of smoke and fogged by a head full of mushrooms, avant-garde producer, Madlib, took his passion for exhuming jazz obscurities and married it to the social consciousness and surreal wordplay of Melvin Van Peebles. The resulting tapestry of beats (The Unseen) built an army of sound from hundreds of samples, each overlapping the other to the point of frazzled disorientation. Unfortunately, the deep timbre of Madlib's voice didn't match the frenetic pace of his ideas or their accompanying noise. As a replacement, he sped up his most arcane rhymes to a chipmunky squeak, creating a Frankenstein's Monster (aka Quasimoto) as vibrant and radical as his symphonic collage.

Where most rappers turn alter-ego into artifice, Madlib uses Quasimoto as a counterbalance, both sonically and lyrically. Childish wordplay about javelin tossing and the violent disposal of antagonists better suits the helium-voiced Quas, allowing the actual Madlib to step in as the responsible and thoughtful alternative. The high-pitch even adds annunciation to peculiarities like "Droppin' shit like some horses," which can be seen as sophomoric or a wonderful moment of the figurative meeting the literal.

Socially pertinent topics like black-on-black crime and police corruption make appearances, but most of the content leans toward tribute, boasting many a reinterpretation of or knowing nod to past musical masters. Well over 50 jazz cats and MCs are called out by name, often coupled with a snippet of their work or muffled echo of their voice. This fandom goes beyond hero worship, stubbornly residing in a world of pure nostalgia, occupied by dusty record bins, analog sound and hydroponic marijuana.

The sound is equally as stubborn, building steam from legions of samples that fade in and out perpetually. Drum beats shuffle between thudding, low-tech drone and soft, spacey water droplets. Xylophone samples add a psychedelic ambiance, especially when juxtaposed with choppy jazz organ and hyperactive turntable gymnastics. A familiar beat or vocal sample will drop in, mid-thought, only to fade into the distance, moments before you can pinpoint the source material.

"Goodmorning Sunshine" capitalizes on this dizzy blend of wonder and befuddlement. Moving from the calming tone of Augustus Pablo's melodica to the wavering nausea of hissing dub resonance, the track never settles on one sound, throwing in drum stutters and vocal samples to further elaborate on its lack of structure. Quasimoto and Madlib rhyme in unison, allowing their vocals to blend together and co-exist with the samples, rolling endlessly over themselves like an aural Mobius strip. It's incredibly chaotic, particularly when coupled with the hypnagogic street poetry of Melvin Van Peebles, whose words act as guide, referencing everything from religious hypocrisy to untimely death to Swedish erotic cinema.

For all of its anarchic, purposely messy abandon, The Unseen is anything but a failure. The end result is a massive, complex quilt of influences, channeling 70s urban America and record store culture through the mindset of an oft-stoned, but undeniably brilliant, curator. Hearing Madlib rip the art from the museum walls, dissect it and implant his own ideas is an exhausting and transformative experience.