By Sean Moeller
As if the world didn’t have enough things to blame the lascivious female form for (us guys doing dumb, dumb things to get noticed by those in possession of those forms, as just one random example), along comes Ghostface Killah to add another bone to the pile. The consequence of his very own lustful mind mongering is his criminally magnificent “Fishscale,” a direct result of trying to grab an eyeful of tantalizing booty.

The 34-year-old Ghostface – one of the founding members of the legendary and conspicuously still banding and disbanding Wu Tang Clan and the slyest rhyme-twister this side of Dirty – was laid up in bed for close to three months a shattered ankle in the freakiest of accidents last year, allowing him ample time to pen the lyrics to the new album, his fifth as a solo artist.

“It was winter and I didn’t see that I walking on a sheet of ice when my friend told me to look at this one bitch’s fat ass. I turned to look and it was like something attacked my ankle. I didn’t fall, but I broke my fibula,” Ghostface said last month at the venue in Austin, Texas, where he was set to perform at the South By Southwest Music Festival. “I was in bed. I had to stay inside and write. I was just going through shit. I used to smoke to write, but I don’t smoke no more. It would have taken me forever to write this record if I hadn’t broken my ankle.”

But the real tragedy in the birth of “Fishscale” was that the break happened before Ghostface got what he was looking for.

“I didn’t even really get to see the bitch ass,” he said, slightly forlornly.

A maestro of language and flow, Ghostface takes an exceptional tour through the topics of relevance – women, getting away with shit behind women’s backs, drugs (lord are there drugs) and advancing the sorry state of hip-hop back to where it was in its so-called heyday, when there was no such infatuation with Cristal champagne, much less a fondness for fountains of it and every blinging person wanting to bathe themselves in it, wearing the bubbly like a gown. Back when emcees rapped about more things than getting loot, providing some structure to what was on their minds, not just bragging about buying certain things and tapping certain asses.

“A lot of shit’s changed,” Ghostface says with his mouth half-full, munching through his words, mumbling sometimes incoherently over a lunch that sounds thick and encumbering enough to be meatloaf or a combination of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. “I grew up off of some good times in hip-hop. Now, our music is gone. Even the beats that were being made back then aren’t being made today.

“We discuss too much of what we’re living in, not knowing that back in the days, we had topics. There was killing going on, but…I remember when N.W.A. came out. They gave us permission to call a chick a bitch or a whore. We had topics and now everything’s got to be based on, ‘I’m going to hurt you, this and that and the third.’ It’s turned into shit, but I think I have a lot of real, good hip-hop left in me.”

He’s still as unpredictable as ever on “Fishscale,” the name a reference to the best cocaine money can buy, spinning off onto the most breath-taking of tangents, then scooping us right back into the depths of the story. “Back Like That,” featuring the newly deemed wunderkind Ne-Yo, harps on the pratfalls of revenge, the way that it’s just not okay for a woman to return the favor to her cheating man and “Kilo” teaches – in a “Schoolhouse Rock” sort of way – the conversion of a kilo into grams and talks about the benefits of having the “candy.” And there are women all over the record, circling and spiraling through every passing thought, integrating into every fancy, getting it and taking it or causing problems.

“I love women, man,” he said. “I’m good at painting stories. I didn’t always know how to paint them, but I know I can do them now. I don’t look at it like I’m the best at painting stories because they might be some other rappers that can paint an ill picture too. I can’t really tell you what’s true and what’s made up. There’s some real and there’s some that you have to add on. The only thing that I hold back on now is talking too much shit. I can’t be singing too, too nasty shit, especially since I’ve got two young daughters. I don’t want them to hear that.”

Two tracks (“Beauty Jackson” and “Whip You with a Strap”) on “Fishscale” are produced by the late J Dilla, who passed away suddenly earlier this year. Ghostface wasn’t able to make it to the funeral of Dilla, a man he’d never met, but knew through the beats he produced for Common, A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo and others.

“I was on the road when he died so I couldn’t make it to the funeral,” he said. “I said a prayer for him in my heart. I’d never met him in real life, but I met him through his music.”

Though he skipped the Wu Tang reunion show at SXSW to do his own showcase, Ghostface promised that 2007 would be the year that a new record would finally see the light of day.

“Most definitely. We talk about that all the time and early next year we’re going to do it,” he said. “We’ve always wanted to make a new record and it’s always been like that, but until everybody gets their shit together…You’ve got nine people in there. What are you going to do? It’s like a big family, but other people ain’t gonna wait for another nigga to finish they stuff. They gonna keep going what they gotta do. We’ll all come in for three months, knock it out and then go back on our ways.”