Where Kanye’s effort was a grand exercise in pomp and delivered a slice of ultramodern hip-hop with all the indulgent trappings and trimmings, this is a compact release that celebrates the staples of vintage rap music and, more specifically, vintage Wu. In many ways, then, Apollo Kids can be considered the antithesis to Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It’s also a treat that Apollo Kids isn’t bogged down by toothless skit tracks or overly indulgent instrumentals, allowing the emphasis to be placed solely on this strong cast of MCs and the rhymes they bring to the table.

Ghost fronts a torrent of verses loaded with pert pop-culture references and odes to yesteryear, his searing stanzas on “Purified Thoughts” and “Starkology” producing a hatful of cracking couplets that somehow stand out amid his frenzied stream of consciousness. His rapid-fire delivery and blitz of sassy metaphors set a high-octane pace.

This is an album sheathed in nostalgia: Ghostface’s school notebooks adorn the cover art, samples were seemingly plucked from some dusty funk/soul vinyl collection, and the lyrics play like a series of fanciful trips down memory lane, courtesy of certified hip-hop heavyweights at the very top of their game.Īnd much like Raekwon on his 2009 landmark, Ghostface manages to steal the show despite the esteemed roll of guest spots. And despite being one of the stable’s only MCs to provide a consistently decent output over his 15-year career (if we forgive the jarring Ghostdeini the Great), it seems Ghostface Killah is also keen to adopt this back-to-basics approach for Apollo Kids. II was an album deeply entrenched in the old school Wu-Tang philosophy and style, and has duly been singled out as the torchbearer of the Wu renaissance. If the Wu-Tang machine has started to run out of steam over the past few years, suffering from a major drought of truly captivating long-players since the turn of the millennium, then their back-to-basics approach to production and in-house guest spots has been a conscious effort to arrest their worrying downward spiral.

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