If you want a record to listen to while walking down a street and you want it to make you feel like you’re in New York with a look of edgy stubbornness about you, then this album would suit you down to the ground – or should that be ‘side-walk’.
The heavily awaited eleventh solo set has been recently released to an eager hip hop audience and carries impressive collaborations within it, boasting the guest voices of AZ, Kool G Rap, Tre Williams and Kandace Springs in with the tale of revenge that’s told in this fourteen track album.
Following Ghostface after a nine year stint away from Staten Island, the tracks tell lyrically of his anger and disappointment at what his home town has become after his thirty six seasons away.
Buildings have changed; a new generation rules the streets and know nothing of Ghostface’s fame.
While he’s been away the legend of his rap respect has been slowly turned to myth and then to nothing.
Vintage soul and hard hitting, it’s hard not to imagine 36 Seasons not doing as well as his last critically acclaimed album Twelve Reason’s to Die, a style and direction that he did well to try and copy here.
Ghostface Killah has managed to make a name for his storytelling lyrics and here it seems no different.
Nine years is a lot to cover in a few tracks and the stories aren’t your average day-to-day ones.
From lost loves in ‘Love Don’t Live Here No More’, to facing arrest in ‘Double Cross’ and realisation of change in ‘Battlefield’, each track is a new woe and insight into loss.
Although an incredibly well done set, proven in a performance of ‘Love Don’t Live Here No More’ on the Tonight Show recently, it’ll take a lot to compete next to Ghostface’s much loved albums and records.
Fan’s will no doubt never not love the chaos loving rapper, but this new neater approach to music could prove to be too much of a change.