____In the fall of 1997, Ghostface Killah decamped to West Africa. His diabetes had become cataclysmic: dizziness, blurred vision, bloodshot eyes, and concussive headaches. He hadn’t quit drinking, which didn’t help; nor did the joints laced with angel dust he still smoked from time to time.
Even before the diagnosis, he convinced himself of his impending demise, fearing cancer, though more likely AIDS. When medical professionals finally tested his blood sugar it was 500 mg/dl. Anything above 550 is considered fatal.
Wary of Western medicine, Ghostface flew to Benin to be treated by a bush doctor in a remote village several hours outside of Cotonou, the nation’s most populous city. Running water was non-existent. The inhabitants lived in mud huts and slept on the floor. When the RZA showed up to meet Ghostface, he saw his bandmate materialize in a dashiki, full beard, and unkempt hair puffed out. RZA had brought Kung Fu flicks—specifically Blade of Fury—which they watched alone as honored guests, the tribe’s children looking on in awe of them and the village’s only TV.
The spiritual nucleus of Supreme Clientele spawns from that pilgrimage. That’s where Tony Starks wrote “Nutmeg” and several other album tracks in a purge of voodoo spirits, occidental poisons, and crazy visions. It’s a masterpiece of comic absurdity and cosmic exorcisms, existential paradox and mathematic precision.
In an attempt to save his life, he seeks out a medicine man in his ancestral homeland and achieves esoteric and sobering realizations about existence. Sans beats, the Wallabee Champ scrawls countless transmissions snatched from the thundering din in his head. It’s as if Muhammad returned from the cave of Hira to prophesize revelations of seasoned giraffe ribs, Scooby Snacks, dancing with the most sexually vibrant member of the *Golden Girls, *and how his dick made a magazine cover (“count how many veins on it”).
About two years later, a fully clothed Starks actually made the cover of The Source and explained the knowledge self-obtained in Africa.
“Fuck all this Tommy Hilfiger, Polo…all this shit…they don’t give a fuck about none of that over there. Everything is the same,” Ghostface said. “But over here, everybody wanna be better than the next one…They might be fucked up, money-wise, but trust me, them muthafuckas is happy, man. Them niggas in harmony ‘cause they got each other.”
Mind you, Pretty Toney delivers this soliloquy while smoking a Newport in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria in Midtown, Manhattan, wearing an ankle-length, royal blue robe with a custom-embroidered “W” on the back. The entire time he’s enraged that “BET Rap City” isn’t playing the video for “Apollo Kids”—the one where he’s swaddled in mink coats and eating a golden ice cream cone.