Music Review: Ghostface Killah, “The Big Doe Rehab” (Island Def Jam) * * * *

Ghostface Killah’s “Fishscale” emerged in 2006 as the antidote to the boring boom-bass boasting of Rick Ross. In sharp contrast to the dumb-as-dirt rhymes of that one-note hustler, the sweeping, widescreen stories of Ghostface proved to be hip-hop’s equivalent to crime writers George Pelicanos and Dennis Lehane. “The Big Doe Rehab” suffers from comparison to “Fishscale” and the absence of MF Doom as producer — Doom is largely replaced here by Diddy’s Hitmen — but still, the erstwhile Wu-Tang Clan rapper is the greatest rhyming crime novelist, armed with a microphone instead of a laptop.

The bar is raised high with “Yolanda’s House,” in which Ghostface weaves a tense account of a drug deal going supremely wrong, forcing the protagonist to flee the scene and seek help from Method Man. “We Celebrate” offers a ringside look at a dealer’s high life set against a Rare Earth sample — it’s the wretched excess before the fall, and Ghostface makes it all cinematic and hard boiled.

When Ghostface tells these tales against lush ‘70s soul grooves, there is never a question of how this will turn out. The devil is in the details, and as chanteuse Chrisette Michele cautions him at the end to “Slow Down,” it’s clear that the Tony Montana wannabe in “The Big Doe Rehab” might need to lie low and put the yacht in storage. Right now, hip-hop simply does not have a better storyteller.