The BEST Songs #2

For every rap song about love, there are 400 about anything else. Hell, I think there are more songs commemorating dead homies than there are ones about being in love. Sure, there’s Cannibal Ox’s “The F Word” (which is awesome) and a handful of songs from The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come for Free (depending whether or not you call that rap), but you can probably hear 52 Cam’ron songs on MTV Hits about “hymen grinding” before you hear one song about love, and it’ll most likely be by Ne-Yo.

To me, it’s fitting that Ghostface Killah, the most critically acclaimed rapper who you’ll never hear on the radio, is one of the MC’s with a rare love song. By the time The Pretty Toney Album came out in 2004, I imagine Ghost must have been confused and angry. Ma$e’s new album was selling better than his, and Method Man had a TV show while all Ghostface had was this short (albeit genius) series of clips on MTV2. So Ghostface dropped the “Killah” from his name, told Raekwon to wait outside for a little while, and wrote a song about his girl. Because, fuck it. Nothing else was working.

Not that “Save Me Dear” blew up the charts or anything (it wasn’t even a single, sadly). Hell, The Pretty Toney Album didn’t even cause popguns to go off. This was the year “Jesus Walks” was making everyone a little more holy, and when forced to choose between asking Jesus and Ghostface’s Girl for salvation, the Big Guy upstairs had a longer reputation for reliability. So “Save Me Dear,” a simply remarkable song, went unnoticed.

Until now (Oh Snap).

The first thing that’s great about “Save Me Dear” is that Ghostface himself produced it. Ghost is by no means a producer by trade (or else the RZA would have nothing to do), which is why it’s something of a minor miracle that the production sounds as good as it does. It’s got horns, but not in a “MY NAME IS JUST BLAZE HAVE SOME FUCKING HORNS” kinda way, more like a Madlib, jazz-sampling way. The fact that Ghost thought this song was important enough that he wanted to create every aspect is something special. That’s love right there, man.

The hook, sung by Old Jazz Dude, gets extra endearing when Ghost himself sorta warbles along with him after the second verse. And, speaking of Ghostface’s warbles, the lyrics here do something that few, if any, other Ghostface songs do: They make sense. Pitchfork’s Jamin Warren, in his awesome capsule review of Supreme Clientele for their “2000-2004: The Top Albums of the Decade’s First Half” feature, wrote, “To be honest, I understand Toney about 40% of the time, and anyone claiming to do better can kiss my mulatto ass.” So to have “Save Me Dear” make pretty much perfect sense all the way through and not fuck up anything that makes Ghostface’s lyrics or delivery Supreme

One cool thing that he does, lyrically, is devotes 70% of the first verse to narration from his girl’s point of view. This allows him to escape his thug persona for a little while and lets his listeners see Ghostface (as a character) in a new light.

“She said, ‘If you shoot, you ain't the real Pretty Tone / Baby, come home, you not alone, be strong whether right or wrong’…” he raps in the middle of this first verse. And then, at the end, “‘And, hey, don't worry bout that jam, you gonna smash 'em / Whose asking? You're still to come / Stay focused, keep it cool, you know I love you’” to which Ghostface responds, “Love you too, babe, thank you.” It’s a tenderness that you can almost never find in rap lyrics, and it really works to Ghost’s advantage.

But, as any good writer knows, it ruins your story to betray a character’s true nature, so Ghost walks a very fine line, like Tupac in “Dear Mama” or “Thug’s Mansion”, between gangsta and sweetheart. In fact, the best line in the song is the one that finds that exact balance: “I'ma sell my guns, and with the cash I'ma bring you to Vegas.” Touching, n’est pas?

In short, Ghostface has written a song that masters a nearly untouched niche in rap music, and one that deserves further exploration. If rappers want to stay relevant as their music becomes more and more mainstream, they’re going to need to take a cue from Ironman: Show some love.