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Music Music Blog

Weekend Roundup 27: Ghostface Killah, Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Lord T and Eloise

Lord T and Eloise play the Hi-Tone this Saturday.

Welcome to the 27th edition of my Weekend Roundup! August begins with a whole slew of high profile artists coming to Memphis, along with great local bands performing all weekend long. Let’s get it on…

Friday, July 31st.
Traveller, 7:30 p.m. at the Levitt Shell, free.

Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Dillon Cooper, 8 p.m. at Minglewood Hall, $15-$200.

Weekend Roundup 27: Ghostface Killah, Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Lord T and Eloise

The Chris Robinson Brotherhood, 8 p.m at the New Daisy, $20.

Dead Soldiers, Mark Edgar Stuart, 9 p.m. at the Hi-Tone, $10.

The Sheiks, Time, 10 p.m. at Bar DKDC, $5.

Saturday, August 1st.
The Oh Hellos, 7:30 p.m. at the Levitt Shell, free.

Weekend Roundup 27: Ghostface Killah, Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Lord T and Eloise (2)

Lord T and Eloise, Memphis Dawls, 3rd Base Ninja, 8 p.m. at the Hi-Tone, $10.

Weekend Roundup 27: Ghostface Killah, Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Lord T and Eloise (3)

Toxie, Ricky and Amy, Chandramama and Sunshine, 9 p.m. at the Lamplighter, $5.

Weekend Roundup 27: Ghostface Killah, Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Lord T and Eloise (4)

Patti LaBelle, 8 p.m. at the Horseshoe Casino, prices vary. 

Weekend Roundup 27: Ghostface Killah, Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Lord T and Eloise (5)

Sunday, August 2nd.
G Love and the Special Sauce, 10 p.m. at Lafayette’s Music Room.

Weekend Roundup 27: Ghostface Killah, Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Lord T and Eloise (6)

Lucas Nelson and the Promise of the Real, 7:30 p.m. at the Levitt Shell, free.

Sounds Like Summer, 8 p.m. at the Hi-Tone, $10.

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Music Music Features

Raekwon, Ghostface Killah at Minglewood Hall

Few groups have had a stranglehold on the hip-hop community over the last 25 years like the Wu-Tang Clan. The rap collective produced superstars like Method Man, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, RZA, and GZA, along with breakout MC’s like Masta Killa and Inspectah Deck. Now that most of the members of the Wu-Tang Clan have been focusing on their solo careers, Memphis has been a tour destination for a few of the group’s artists, including Masta Killa and Inspectah Deck (who played at the old Hi-Tone a few years ago) and Raekwon (who played at the Young Avenue Deli in 2012). But no Wu-Tang Memphis appearance has had more hype than this Friday’s show that features Ghostface Killah and Raekwon at Minglewood Hall.

The duo is touring in support of the 20th anniversary of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, the masterpiece of an album that launched Raekwon into superstardom. Every track on Only Built 4 Cuban Linx is a classic, from the hard-hitting lyrical content of “Guillotine (Swordz)” to the classic anthem “Ice Cream,” featuring Method Man’s infamous chorus, which isn’t exactly fit for print. While Ghostface Killah went on to create seminal albums like Bulletproof Wallets, Put It on the Line, and The Pretty Toney Album, there is something about the staying power of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx that just oozes classic Wu-Tang Clan. RZA produced most of the album, and while many have tried to replicate/rip off his beats, few have come close to re-creating that classic ’90s Shaolin sound. If you’ve been paying attention to hip-hop at any point in the last two decades, be at Minglewood Hall on Friday and remember, “Wu-Tang is for the children.”

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Music Music Blog

Minglewood Hall Announces Ghostface Killah and Raekwon Show

Ghostface Killah and Raekwon of Wu-Tang Clan.

On Friday, July 31st, two living legends will perform at Minglewood Hall. Ghostface Killah and Raekwon (of Wu-Tang Clan) are responsible for some of the most influential hip hop of the last 20 years, and after an amazing performance at the Young Avenue Deli in 2012, Raekwon will be back in Memphis. More information on the show can be found here. Get ready for the duel of the iron mics.

Minglewood Hall Announces Ghostface Killah and Raekwon Show

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Music Record Reviews

A rap CEO and publisher’s poet on two very different musical memoirs

Dig, if you will, a picture: Rapper Dennis “Ghostface Killah” Coles skips out of his girl’s crib just ahead of a police raid, seeking refuge at the home of his friend and colleague Method Man. Busting in at Meth’s place unannounced, he finds his friend in mid-fuck. At the sound of someone coming through the door, Method Man tumbles out of bed, reaching for his gun on the nightstand, but stubs his toe in the process. The woman, who is asthmatic, grabs at the sheets, screaming and struggling to breathe. The previously rattled Ghost cracks up at this sight; Meth is pissed, his mood made worse because his dick keeps slipping through the slit in his boxers.

This happens on “Yolanda’s House,” one of the best tracks on Ghostface Killah’s new album, The Big Doe Rehab, and it’s typical Ghostface: vulgar, funny, so vivid and in-the-moment you can practically smell the residue of pot smoke and sex in the room.

Lots of rappers — most of them these days — work the same terrain, spinning tales of drug deals, gun violence, casual sex, and conspicuous consumption. But few of them are great artists. Ghostface is the best since the late Notorious B.I.G. at turning underworld/underclass vignettes into gripping and witty musical cinema and at giving these stories moral gravity without speechifying. If any modern rapper should have been a scenarist for The Wire, it’s Ghostface.

You can hear it again on Big Doe Rehab‘s “Walk Around,” a first-person account of shooting someone that goes places contemporary so-called gangsta rap rarely does: The protagonist, so rattled by what he’s done that he vomits in the getaway car, freaks out at the blood and tissue on his clothing. (“Y’all niggas would bug out too if you had somebody’s flesh on you.”)

The Big Doe Rehab is Ghostface Killah’s third full album of new material since March 2006, following his masterpiece Fishscale and the better-than-anyone-could-expect extras disc More Fish. It’s a run that marks him as one of pop music’s most productive artists though one who’s a particularly specialized, even rarefied taste.

On The Big Doe Rehab, Ghostface surrounds his sharp storytelling with the deep-soul samples and off-kilter humor that are his trademarks. The single “We Celebrate” is a blaring paean to the good life, gangsta-style: “Like my baby’s first steps, ya heard!” or “Like one of my goons just came home!” “Supa GFK” is stream-of-consciousness rap over Johnny Watson’s “Superman Lover.”

Still, The Big Doe Rebab is a lot closer to More Fish than Fishscale — a little too heavy on guest stars and posse members and not as coherent. Fishscale came at you in what felt like orchestrated movements; More Fish was, by definition, just a bunch of songs. The Big Doe Rehab is more the latter. Still, Ghostface’s minor work bests a thematically similar major work from his Def Jam benefactor Jay-Z.

With his mature CEO’s album Kingdom Come falling on deaf ears, Jay-Z’s American Gangster feels less driven by personal expression than by a desire to give the people what they want. It’s an album of Jay-Z reminding everyone that he used to deal drugs. And, like the overblown movie that inspired it, American Gangster isn’t thoughtful enough to be great.

There are defensive childhood remembrances (“No Hook”: “I’m so fo sho, it’s no facade/’Stay out of trouble,’ mama said as mama sighed/Her fear, her youngest son bein’ victim of homicide/But I gotta get you outta here, mama, or I’ma die, inside”) and thrilling evocations of the amoral indulgences of drug-trade triumph (the “black superhero music” of “Roc Boys”). But, for the most part, Jay-Z is not a storyteller of Ghostface’s caliber. His primary gift isn’t conceptual or even lyrical, but vocal: the illusion of effortlessness in his honeyed flow. He’s the purer MC — the best since Biggie in his own way — and American Gangster peaks when Jay-Z sounds most relaxed, as on “Success,” where he raps over a spare track of vampy organ and scattered beat, rewriting an old Eminem lyric before discarding his crime-boss persona: “I used to give shit/Now I don’t give a shit more/Truth be told I had more fun when I was piss poor.”

Jay-Z rarely sounds so free on American Gangster, and that’s part of the problem. Ghostface Killah’s lower profile and more modest expectations may be what allow him to be the better artist. The superstar Jay-Z has no choice but to reach for significance, while Ghostface digs deeper by just telling stories and cracking jokes.

Chris Herrington

Grades: The Big Doe Rehab: A-; American Gangster: B+

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Music Record Reviews

More Fish–Ghostface Killah

Released last spring, Ghostface Killah’s Fishscale was an instant hip-hop classic — to my ears and apparently to many others, the best album released last year in any genre. Released in the final days of 2006, More Fish, as its title makes plain, makes no attempt to disguise what it is: a quickie meant to capitalize on a career high.

Packed with guest spots from protégés and second-tier Wu grads (Cappadonna lives), filled out with tracks that are apparently Fishscale session leftovers, and capped with a remix of Fishscale‘s hit single “Back Like That,” More Fish is pure product, but Dennis “Ghostface Killah” Coles is on such a roll right now that it’s semi-essential listening anyway.

There are only three solo tracks here, but they’re all keepers. On the relentlessly head-bobbing, self-produced opener “Ghost Is Back,” our protagonist spits his dizzying flow over an Eric B. & Rakim sample. “Outta Town Shit” and “Alex (Stolen Script)” are the kind of concise yet densely detailed musical short stories Ghost excels at, the first about a dice game turned ugly in Minneapolis, the second a gangster-goes-Hollywood scenario that might be a Sopranos subplot.

Which isn’t to say that the tracks with guest spots are all filler (though some of them are). Kanye West delivers a classic verse — with his patented combination of arrogance and self-deprecation — on the “Back Like That” remix, while Ghost doesn’t even appear on the strong Trife Da God showcase “Grew Up Hard.” My favorite random addition from an artist prone to the random: American Idol references, of which I’ve spotted at least three. — CH

Grade: A-