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Weekend Pick: Ghostface Killah & Adrian Younge at The Blockley for Mother's Day

The Wu Tang rapper and '70s soul conceptual mastermind take revenge on the 12 DeLucas in West Philadelphia.

"We made this album because we don't like you," Adrian Younge told me the other day.

He was joking, I think. But let me explain: The album  in question is Adrian Younge Presents Twelve Reasons To Die starring Ghostface Killah, the hip-hopera that tells the story of Tony Starks, the fictional Mafia hit man alter ego of the Wu Tang Clan rapper, who goes to war with a crime family known as the 12 DeLucas.

The DeLucas think they have done Starks in when they dump his body in a vat of boiling oil in an Italian record plant, but when the 12 records made from that vinyl are played ... well, let's just say that's when they need to beware of the stare of the Ghostface Killah.

My mother was a little disturbed when she heard of this plotline. So just to reassure that it's all merely a musical-cinematic homage to Italian horror movies and American blaxploitation films of the '60s and '70s, and that Younge only came up with the name DeLuca because, as he told me, "I was just looking online for Italian last names that would sound like a crime family but not something that was already used, like a Gambino or Corleone," I'm considering taking her to see Ghostface and Younge with his band Venice Dawn when they play The Blockley this Sunday night. It is Mother's Day, after all.

My interview with Younge, the multi-instrumentalist conceptual mastermind who also has a new album with William Hart of The Delfonics, will be in the A & E section of the Sunday Inquirer. Along with the Twelve Reasons To Die album, there's also a comic book series of the same name that has been launched by Black Mask Studios. The first volume went on sale this week and is available at the Brave New Worlds shop in Old City and Willow Grove.

Below, check out the pseudo trailer to a 12 Reasons To Die movie that has not been filmed (but features the Wu Tang Clan's The RZA in a key role, plus the video for The Delfonics' "Stop and Look (And You Have Found Love)."

Details of The Blockley show are here

Previously: David Bowie's Jesus video Follow In the Mix on Twitter