Garth Brooks. Jessica Simpson. Ghostface Killah?

Yes, they all have something in common: They all have tried their hand at a new genre. On his latest album, Ghostdini: The Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City, Ghostface Killah has ditched his traditional gangster rap to create an R&B album that proves to be a lot less “yayo” with more a lot more Ne-Yo.

But calling it an R&B album isn’t completely accurate. Missing from his new album are the vintage horns and old-school soul samples that were ubiquitous in his previous works, and in their place are silky-smooth bass lines and R&B powerhouses like Estelle and John Legend. Gone are the drug-deal-gone-bad stories and Tony Starks escapades — on this CD, Killah waxes on the finer points of romance.

Unfortunately, he was little too ambitious with this album. Instead of opening up the MC to new territories, it appears the new genre limits him.

The problem with R&B is it really only covers one subject: love. With Ghostdini shoehorned into covering one subject, Killah never really gets to showcase his best traits: his wild creativity and almost ridiculous inventiveness. This is a rapper who has adopted the superhero persona of “Ironman,” has rapped about his discovery of an underwater mermaid colony and claimed in one song he wrote the script for the movie “Ray.” But that zaniness is missing on this album.

Give the man a gold chain for effort, though. Despite only having one subject to support an entire album, Killah does his best to cover the entire romantic spectrum.

This is how we encounter the sweet, sensitive Ghostface Killah, who makes his case for husband-of-the-year with lines like these from “Forever”: “We can be broke/ Holes in our coat/ Even still we shine/ We got each other through the bad and the best of time.” There’s a sympathetic side seen on “Do Over,” where he regrets his infidelity in a relationship that gave him a daughter.

Then there’s the raunchy side, like the song “Stapleton Sex,” where Killah says, well, things that would send Tipper Gore into cardiac arrest.

The album peaks with “Guest House,” a stream-of-consciousness story that could be straight out of an episode of “Desperate Housewives.” The song is Killah’s first-person account of coming home to find his girlfriend in bed with another man (voiced by Fabolous). Without pausing for a chorus, much less a breath, “Guest House” is a brief glimpse of what has made Killah arguably the most successful Wu-Tang MC. Despite this success, the song was a little out of place on this R&B album. It’s as if Killah became impatient with trying to craft another R&B-flavored tune and just regressed back to the style he’s accustomed to.

With the pendulum swinging between saintly and sexy combined with the brief attempts to break away from his new sound, Ghostface Killah has created a disjointed, erratic album lacking a sustained focus. The consolation is that the Ironman-wannabe put just as much effort into this as any of his other albums, good or bad. The songs are intricate, each featured artist adds their own element to their respective song and the beats are well crafted. But, you know, this an encouraging sign for when Ghostface Killah decides to tackle a country album.

2 1/2 stars out of 5.