So you might’ve heard Ghost is dropping a Soul/R&B album this year. While the rapper/singer role is probably more accepted now than it’s ever been (Drake, Kid Cudi, and countless auto-tuned ’singers’) those familiar with Pretty Toney’s soulful stylings might find a whole album of his singing pretty hard to take. Rest easy, Def Jam’s Lenny S. brings some damage control to the promotion campaign. Hit the jump for a cut supposedly of Ghost’s new album ‘The Wizard Of Poetry’ and further explanation from the man himself.

Ghostface Killah – “Forever”

Ghostface already explained his motivation for creating an album full of his more soulful cuts in a recent interview:

It’s my last album [for Def Jam] so I wanted to do the album I always wanted to do, man. You gotta tell the fans that you not gettin’ no younger here – we gettin’ older! And everybody don’t sell crack no more, man. I don’t sell crack, yo. I ain’t movin’ no bricks or none of that other shit. I ain’t shoot nobody in like…since the early 90’s, man. How long you gonna be 40 years old and actin’ like you still sellin’ cracks and you on the block and you doin’ this and you doin’ that when times is more serious, man. We in a fuckin’ recession, B! Ain’t nobody gettin’ no money, man! We gotta stop lyin’ to ourselves and lyin’ to the fans. And the fans gotta stop bein’ so dumb and ignorant, and know it’s time to talk about grown-man situations. Shit that happen in the real life, inside your household, your love life, your personal life, that’s just like, ‘Damn, it’s hard for a nigga to get some money!’

Even though the self-proclaimed ‘Wizard of Poetry’ has a singing voice that’ll make the Wicked Witch melt he does have a lot of soul in his gut. You can just hear the fun he’s having whenever he sings a couple bars and I have almost as much fun listening to it, so let’s hope he’ll still do that (and he probably will).

As a bonus cut here’s the lead leak (nobody actually calls it a single anymore, do they?) from underrated Ghostface associate Trife Da God/Trife Diesel’s upcoming solo debut “Better Late Than Never.”

Trife Diesel ft. Ghostface Killah – Respectfully