On his new album, 36 Seasons, Ghostface ostensibly returns to an alter ego we haven’t heard in nine years, or 36 seasons. Tony Starks takes his name from the Iron Man comic, but here, Starks is neither millionaire playboy nor metal-suit superhero. Instead he’s a prodigal gangster, having returned home only to be betrayed and left for dead. Each song represents a different moment in that storyline. Ghostface invites a host of friends to play different characters, including seasoned Brooklyn rapper AZ, who is cast as the primary friend turned foe.

Some fans complain that Ghostface surrounds himself with too many guests these days, and 36 Seasons does little to dent that criticism. If this were a movie, he wouldn’t appear in a quarter of the scenes. The album’s most consistent presence is actually that of the band, The Revelations. Basically Wu-Tang’s in-house group, the musicians suffuse the album with the warmth of ’70s soul.

Ultimately though, you listen to a Ghostface album because you want to listen to Ghostface, especially when he’s at his explosive, audacious best.

36 Seasons highlights the rapper’s willingness to throw sideways darts at the board to see what sticks. After 18 years and more than a dozen albums, Ghostface has become akin to the classic action directors he pays homage to in his music. The overall catalog has its hits and misses, but Ghostface still manages to keep audiences enthralled through his violently vibrant imagination, no matter what the season.

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The premise is a well-worn story: guy (Ghost) goes away. While he’s gone his neighborhood falls apart and his better half takes up with someone lesser (G Rap). Guy comes back. He fights the bad man. He gets hurt and must be saved by a possibly unscrupulous , extraordinarily talented doctor (Pharoahe Monch). His friend (AZ) turns on him. He gets the girl in the end. It’s told episodically, but the pacing means you’ll devour it like we do a House of Cards season.

The music is propulsive; the storytelling is efficient and visual. AZ flows syncopated and improbably well. G Rap drops deceptively simple lines that haunt for days: “Been running here for nine years / And believe me, none of ’em kind years.” And Ghostface is still the guy who notes what time it is when he runs up on the woman he left behind nine years ago, who names every character. He’s the same writer who describes the neighborhood he’s cleared of profiteers as a place where “kids can be treasured” and illustrates his domination over an opponent by saying “I wipe my d— on his spaghetti.”

The miles on these musicians’ tires are evident in the subplots. At first I laughed at Ghost’s character acting surprised that a new guy had taken his place in his lady’s heart – so much so that the man is wearing Ghost’s bath robe. What did Ghost think was gonna happen? He says himself that he never even called her that whole time. But the fifth track on 36 Seasons is a cover. The Revelations, who perform all the music on the album and quietly act as a kind of narrator, do “It’s a Thin Line Between Love and Hate,” and it comes on right in the middle of the action. You know the lyric: “The sweetest woman in the world could be the meanest woman in the world, if you make her that way.” Bamboo, played by R&B singer Kandace Springs, has a song to herself later, and by the second to last track on the album she’s saying, to Ghost, “Your absence made me forget who you were.” “It’s all good,” he says. “36 seasons was long.” The album closes with an instrumental titled “I Love You for All Seasons.”

Would you look at that: a real life love story disguised as an action movie. From this cast I’d expect nothing less.

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