But on Supreme Clientele, he wholly embraced the mythology and iconography of the Marvel superhero Iron Man (aka, business magnate Tony Stark), “the armor-clad superhero of the free world” who survives a kidnapping attempt and builds a suit of armor that gives him superhuman strength. Ghostface had been calling himself “Ironman” for years, even using it as the title of his first solo album. “Tony Stark makes you feel/He’s a cool exec with a heart of steel/As Iron Man, all jets ablaze, he fights and smites with Repulsor Rays!” It was… a grainy jingle about Iron Man lifted from the 1966 Marvel Super Heroes TV cartoon? But when fans eagerly popped the CD into their Discman, it wasn’t Ghostface’s voice that greeted them. Arguably the greatest of Wu-Tang solo albums, Supreme Clientele is a wild tapestry of blasted-out beats and head-spinning, free-associative rhymes that could fit in no other rapper’s mouth. In the early months of Y2K, Ghostface released Supreme Clientele. Like a superhero, he emerged from the near-death abyss stronger than ever.
Then, in 1999, he was forced to plead guilty to a trumped-up attempted robbery charge from years earlier and served four months behind bars in Rikers Island. In 1997, the rapper (born Dennis Coles) traveled to West Africa, where he received natural treatments from a bush doctor. Sickened with diabetes, he battled debilitating headaches and dizziness and thought he might be dying. The years since his solo debut, 1996’s Ironman, had been wrought with trauma for the reclusive Wu-Tang Clan fire-breather. In the winter of 2000, Ghostface Killah returned from a long period of turmoil to deliver his masterpiece.
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