Ghostface Shillah: The iron brand of Pretty Toney
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Hip-hop is, by its very nature, a game of self-promotion, so it’s only natural that so many rap stars over the years have branched out from boasting about how much cash they carry or girls they pull to, say, running their own clothing lines or partnering with Vitamin Water. Although he’s not a huckster on the level of Sean “Diddy” Combs or 50 Cent, Ghostface Killah—who hits the Bluebird Theater on Oct. 30, followed by a Halloween show at the Fox Theatre—is one of the leading examples of how to sell yourself in the rap game. Here are some of the many ways in which he’s established the Ghostface brand.
Ghostface Killah, the doll
He wasn’t the first hip-hop artist to have an action figure—Tupac Shakur, Eminem, Notorious B.I.G., and Public Enemy all beat him to it—but Ghostface’s toy was undoubtedly the most ostentatious. The Ghostface Doll from 4Cast Limited came in a limited-edition, gold-lined box with a velvet lining that smelled of “remnants of fine Louis XIII cognac,” while the doll itself boasted a 14-karat gold chain and gold chalice studded with Swarovski crystals—which explains the hefty $500 price tag. For that you also got a one in 500 chance to spend the day with Ghostface himself, but if you didn’t win, you could replicate the experience by pressing the doll’s voicebox, which would spout Ghostface-isms like, “Remember when I long-dicked you and broke your ovary?”—just the thing for some unusually cruel role-playing with that stank ho, Talking Barbie.
Ghostface Killah, the video game character
When Ol’ Dirty Bastard declared, “Wu-Tang is for the children” at the 1998 Grammys, he wasn’t having a “crack moment”; he was probably just dropping an early plug for 1999’s short-lived Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style PlayStation game, a quickie cash-in that starred all of the Wu-Tang Clan members as martial artists cutting a swath through the wilds of Staten Island. Ghostface plays a grappler boasting two huge iron gloves—a nod to his “Tony Stark” alter ego, perhaps, although that’s about as personal as it gets, as both the voice work and renderings are disappointingly slapdash. He fares better in Def Jam: Vendetta and its two sequels, wrestling all comers alongside fellow rappers like Ludacris and Fat Joe—and in Def Jam: Icon, playing a temperamental rap star who wrecks your would-be mogul’s rise to the top by dropping off his tour to go “make a video game with gorillas and ninjas and shit.” When’s that coming out?
Ghostface Killah, the actor
Give Ghostface credit for one thing: Unlike some other rappers (Xzibit, DMX, Master P, and 50 Cent, to name just a handful), he knows his skill set doesn’t include being a thespian. Outside of a cameo in James Toback’s Black And White, Ghostface has stuck to appearing in comedies and always as himself—and while he may not ham it up like his tourmates Method Man and Redman, he has an understated comic timing that’s made him a show-stealer in everything from The Boondocks to Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story to his winking deleted scene in Iron Man. And truth be told, both his deadpan exchange with Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock (“Ghostface, you think you could mention donaghyestates.com at any point?” “I’ll go get my rhyming dictionary”) and his Human Giant PSA about the dangers of paralyzing yourself just to get wheelchair access at concerts (“I don’t think comedy shows should promote that shit, which is why I’m going to fuck Aziz [Ansari] up right now”) are funnier than all 90 minutes of How High.
Ghostface Killah, the self-help expert
You can learn a lot from Ghostface’s lyrics—the metric system (“Kilo”), how to seduce women (“Camay”), how to handle the police (“Run”)—but you can learn even more from his 2007 book The World According To Pretty Toney. Pitched as the hip-hop answer to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, it offers advice on everything from furthering your career (“Think of a new invention, a new toilet bowl or something”) to hygiene (“Don’t just brush your teeth—scrub your tongue… That’s where all that bacteria be runnin’ around and tap dancin’ at night”) to how to dress. (“A bitch don’t like you to step to her, acting like you trying to bag her with your shoes all fucked up… If you got a decent pair of kicks on, you might be able to pull a bitch.”) It’s a rare moment of charity from one of the most relentless self-promoters in the hip-hop world.
