Underwater (2006) - Ghostface Killah

Ghostface Killah, Wu-Tang Clan’s prolific assassin, portrays a drug smuggler shot during an offshore trafficking exchange gone wrong, who falls overboard and begins a phantasmagorical descent toward his spiritual fate. Guided by “mermaids with Halle Berry haircuts,” he witnesses a chimerical world of mergirls sporting pearls and Gucci belts, Spongebob in a Bentley Coupe (whose girl checks out Ghostface, prompting Spongebob to bitch-slap her), treasures and vessels (including Noah’s Ark and relics from the Titanic), finally reaching Atlantis where Muslims worship, welcoming him with Qur’ans and Torahs—the respective religious texts of Islam and Judaism, whose followers on earth are diametrically opposed politically. Producer MF Doom (of Madvillain) conjures a mysterious dragnet of Charlie’s Angelesque flute samples (from “Just A Love Child” by Bobbi Humphrey) and a spectral mermaid voice. It’s fitting that Ghostface depicts an aquatic scene: his album’s title, Fishscale, refers to Peruvian Fishscale—a form of cocaine—bridging the drug reference with the fishscales of a mermaid’s tail. Although he eventually reaches the promised land, it’s unclear whether he means to suggest that the Islamic religion is the only true one, or whether it, and Judaism, are as illusory as the underwater hallucinatory scene he just witnessed.

Listen to "Underwater" and purchase from iTunes Music Store.