Apollo Kids (album)

Background

Ghostface Killah recorded the album Blue & Cream near the end of his contact with Def Jam Recordings, but discarded it and instead offered the label Apollo Kids, which he recorded as a mixtape. He later said of the exchange with Def Jam in a 2012 interview for Complex:

They wanted Supreme, I’m gassing for them to do Supreme. But I caught them niggas real quick for their bread and then gave them Apollo Kids. That was gonna be called The Warm Up, but they was like, 'Nah, I know what you're trying to do.' They caught on.

Apollo Kids was recorded by him at Red Bull Studios and Starks Studios in Staten Island, New York.

Reception

The album debuted at number 128 on the US Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 13,000 copies in the United States. It also entered at number 28 on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and at number 10 on its Rap Albums chart.

Apollo Kids received universal acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 84, based on 17 reviews. Allmusic's David Jeffries called it "a return to the grimey soul and stream-of-consciousness street flow of the man’s best work". The A.V. Club's Nathan Rabin stated, "The disc’s tightness, cohesion, and quality are even more surprising: Ghostface hasn’t sounded this hungry or focused since Fishscale [...] At its best, Ghostface’s music is about raw, visceral emotion and unfiltered rage". Entertainment Weekly's Simon Vozick-Levinson viewed it as a timeless addition to Ghostface's catalogue and complimented its "jittery pulp fiction and zany free-associative zingers over scratchy soul, funk, and rock samples". Rolling Stone writer Jonah Weiner stated "On track after track, he blows dust off some dirty-soul loop, with boasts as inspired as ever [...] and street-crime storytelling as vivid as ever". Slant Magazine's Huw Jones complimented the album's "back-to-basics approach" and called it "a compact release that celebrates the staples of vintage rap music and, more specifically, vintage Wu".

David Amidon of PopMatters stated "it feels like a work of boundless energy", but is, "essentially, the safest and most accessible album yet from Ghostface Killah, often hinting at the associative insanity he’s capable of without ever fully taking us there". Pitchfork Media's Ian Cohen noted a "lack of any sort of organizational principle" and commented that "basically arbitrary sequencing never allows too much momentum to build", but commended Ghostface's "harried intensity" and stated "he's still an incredibly ostentatious lyricist, just one that's easier to parse". MSN Music's Robert Christgau gave the album a three-star honorable mention, indicating "an enjoyable effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well treasure." He cited "In tha Park" and "Purified Thoughts" as highlights and quipped, "Living off his past, but it's quite a past and a damned decent living".

Track listing

Personnel

Credits for Apollo Kids adapted from Allmusic.