Really, you should be listening to music every day, but thanks to Twitter, Monday has become the best day of the week to discover new songs, show some love to the tune currently dominating your iPod playlist and quietly judge the listening habits of your closest friends. Yes, it's #MusicMonday, one of Twitter's most enduring trending topics. Hence "MTV News' #MusicMonday," a weekly look at the songs we are currently crushing on.
This week, Ghostface Killah takes us forward by taking us back.
Most music critics get together their year-end lists around the first week of December, because by then they've had the opportunity to hear every piece of relevant music released during the calendar year. But there is typically an album or two that manages to slip through the cracks, drop a week or two before Christmas and totally make all the year-end lists somewhat irrelevant. This year, that spoiler role went to Wu-Tang Clan MVP Ghostface Killah, who just released his new album Apollo Kids and, in typical Ghostface fashion, knocked it completely out of the park.
Ghost is the MC that you should be thinking about when you think about Wu-Tang, as he manages to embody just about everything that is great about hip-hop's most notorious collective. He combines all the brutality of the street with the flights of fancy he has seen in too many movies and delivers it in a style that splits the difference between on-the-corner rhyming and the more emotive (and oft-imitated) "crying style." Some of the best Wu-Tang solo albums belong to Ghost, including 1996's Ironman and 2006's Fishscale. Apollo Kids is by far his strongest work since the latter album, doling out bits of razor-tongued genius amidst a tight collection of beats ("Black Tequila" and "Starkology" are especially tight). Ghost always manages to get the most out of his guest stars too, and Apollo Kids is no exception. He manages to harness killer verses from Busta Rhymes ("Superstar"), Joell Ortiz ("Drama") and Jim Jones ("Handcuffin' Them Hoes") without breaking much of a sweat. Considering how sharp he was on Wu-Massacre (his tag-team album with Method Man and Raekwon that dropped earlier this year), it's possible that Ghostface Killah had the best year of any MC on the planet not named Eminem.
Ghost hasn't dropped any videos for Apollo Kids yet (though a clip for "2getha Baby" is in the works), which means that in order to properly celebrate #MusicMonday, we have to look back in the vault. Which is OK, especially considering Ironman's "Daytona 500" is one of the weirdest and most thrilling Wu videos of all time.
What's your #MusicMonday jam? Let us know in the comments!