2 out of 5

Label: Sony

Producer: RZA

‘Ironman’ absolutely shows us Ghostface’s skill as a wordsmith, with the majority of the tracks filled to the brim with rolling and building rhyme-slinging that, while of course crude and rash, rarely falls back on an easy word or pointless comparison to make the next phrase work.  It also bears the flush RZA sound, rich and yet stripped down to a core beat.  However – and I’m not a Wu follower, so I can’t say how much of this ‘sounds’ like Ghostface vs. Wu vs. RZA or how much the artist might be involved with helming the sound – however, ‘Ironman’ only offers the briefest moments of the kind of synced up energy and aggression that interested me in GK’s work (namely a track on the Blade Trinity soundtrack, which was full of generic concepts and ‘nigga’s, but was looped around an unbelievably inventive (RZA-supplied) beat and flipped that typical street-level range of words into a weird brew of stupid and smart and catchy).  Otherwise the disc lacks the major element that can make or break a hip-hop track to me – change.  The touchstones of the genre (let’s refer to the elements) do focus around rapping and turntablism, so you can’t fault a guy for just stringing words together over samples, but then again, it was ’97 by this point, so it’s not out of the question to desire some variation.  Without ignoring those keystones, this can be achieved simply by switching up emcee’s – which does result in some of the disc’s highlights, featuring various Wu members but mostly Cappadonna and Raekwon, and results in the middle-album saver of the tag-teamin’ ‘Box in Hand.’  The creativity and picture painting of that track, though, can unfortunately be juxtaposed against the majority of the album’s filler – Winter Warz, Assassination Day – where even a ring of slightly different spittin’ styles can’t mask that it feels just a bit too loose, random “I’m the best” boasts laid out over interesting funky beats, but beats that just loop for four minutes and do nothing else.  Elsewhere this formula is punctuated by some aggressive momentum, such as on ‘Daytona,’ but it’s really opener ‘Iron Maiden’ that fully capitalizes on what I think GK is capable of, and what I hope to hear more of on future albums – a full song, with ear-bleeding delivery that, sure, drops his constant ‘big dick’ fallback reference, but maintains this slightly cynical and serious edge to it, combined with a structure that has bridges and choruses.

‘Poisonous Darts,’ six tracks in, manages a similar bristle, and then finally toward disc’s end things sharpen up into actual narratives and full scope writing with ‘Motherless Child’ and the Mary J. Blige duo ‘All That I Got is You.’

So it’s totes possible – probable – that I just don’t get this style of hip-hop yet.  That I’m not ready for the sparseness, and can’t appreciate the basic tenets when they’re executed well over the course of an over-long album…  But regardless, they’re my ears, and ‘Ironman’ is mostly a snooze.  The good stuff is smartly spread to beginning, middle and end, and the remainder is same-soundey enough that my finger twitches to the track skip.  Rhyming skill?  Totally.  Are women mostly just bitches interested in handling Ghostface’s big dick?  Apparently…?  Song-crafting skill?  Sometimes…