The opening lines of “Iron Man,” the lead track on Supreme Clientele 2, are crafted to deceive in the best way possible. Ghostface Killah begins with a flourish of imagery so strange, so specific, that it feels like he has tapped back into the surreal crime storytelling that made him a legend. “The stamp on the dope was Ronald Reagan with fronts” immediately sets a bizarre stage, one that blends political satire, drug-world detail, and Ghostface’s signature absurdism. The follow-up“My man ran over his legs, all we heard was the crunch” lands with a pulp-fiction punch, heightened by cartoonish sound effects. It’s a moment that could sit comfortably beside his most celebrated early work, where rumbling Jeeps and unexpected kitchen mishaps colored the landscape of his rhymes.

But this head fake is exactly that: a tease of greatness that the rest of the project struggles to sustain. Ghostface seems aware of his own mythos, deliberately reaching back to Ironman and Supreme Clientele, yet the execution wavers between nostalgia and self-parody. The beats are serviceable but rarely inspired, often leaning too heavily on recreating an atmosphere rather than pushing it forward. His rhymes, while still occasionally dazzling, slip into unevenness moments of brilliance cut short by lines that feel rote.

The frustration lies not in decline but in the glimpse of what could have been. When Ghostface is locked in, few rappers can match his ability to blend the cinematic with the ridiculous. That opening couplet is proof he still has the spark. What’s missing is consistency: the cohesion that once made his wildest images feel inevitable rather than incidental. Supreme Clientele 2 doesn’t tarnish his legacy, but it doesn’t extend it either it lingers as an echo, sharp but fleeting, of the Ghostface who once redefined rap surrealism.