Initially conceived as a seamless amalgam of psychedelic street cuts and authentic airplay staples, the Bulletproof we know and love is less hallucinatory, but it flows even more seamlessly. In a recent interview with Wax Poetics, he told the writer David Ma, “I wasn’t too happy with Bulletproof, because RZA forgot to clear some samples on there and shit became a real distraction for me and everyone around.” He’s such a high-level conceptualist and visionary that the Bulletproof Wallets that arrived on record-store shelves two decades ago, while not as extravagant as the version he’d handed to his label, is still stellar. Never mind that Ghostface doesn’t particularly like Bulletproof Wallets. Not for nothing was he sporting that championship belt in the “Cherchez La Ghost” video a year earlier. Even if you were outside at the time, up to your eyeballs in bright-ass Iceberg sweaters, it’s easy to undervalue how pivotal Ghost was to his group’s relevancy going into Bulletproof Wallets, released 20 years ago this Saturday. For some time, Ghost had almost single-handedly held down the Wu-Tang imprimatur, most recently via 2000’s widely beloved Supreme Clientele. Ghostface Killah’s rep in November 2001 was as bulletproof as the order window at whatever chicken spot he probably visited with that woman in the “Ice Cream” video after the shoot.
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