"You gotta speak from every angle," insists Ghostface Killah, sprawled out on a lily-white duvet in a deluxe central London hotel suite, room service menu abandoned by his side. "You gotta speak for the have-nots. Everybody ain't rich. You've still got motherfuckers in the trenches. So you gotta hit them."

The surroundings might appear luxurious, but Ghostface – born Dennis Coles in Staten Island, New York – has the air of a man who has never forgotten the importance of the hustle. This November marks 20 years since the release of Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), a dense and smoky fusion of New York crime rap and kung-fu mysticism that catapulted his group, the Wu-Tang Clan, to worldwide notoriety. "Everybody was like, 'It's not gonna work, it's not gonna work', the big names, [Def Jam CEO] Russell Simmons, everybody," he remembers. "We were selling records out the back of our trunk, getting turned down by the labels because there were too many of us in our group. We did that first record for $30,000 dollars. Believed in ourselves, you know what I mean? We were the illest niggas, we knew there ain't nobody playing with us. We was a movement, man: fucking around in a 15-passenger van, slobbin' on your brother's shoulder."

Two decades on, Ghost is still on his grind. He's about to play a sold-out show at the 100 Club with DOOM, the masked rap enigma and sometime Damon Albarn collaborator, with whom he's been recording an album, provisionally titled Swift And Changeable, since 2006 ("Maybe the end of this year," he mutters, when asked its estimated delivery date). Recently, he played Coachella with the reunited Wu, who are reportedly back in the studio and recording a new album, A Better Tomorrow ("We got verses and shit, but you gotta make sure it's right… don't rush it"). And he has a brand-new album out now: a collaboration with LA composer Adrian Younge entitled Twelve Reasons To Die.

Sumptuously orchestrated, its elegant arrangements blooming with strings and soprano choruses, Twelve Reasons To Die is very much the sort of record a rapper should be making in his 42nd year. Younge cut his teeth as a hip-hop producer, but his more recent work, starting with his pioneering soundtrack for 2009 blaxploitation parody Black Diamond, draws on 70s psychedelic soul and the soundtracks of Ennio Morricone. "I thought it was like music I sung over a long time ago; sounded like some old Wu shit, you know? But played with live instruments," says Ghostface, approvingly. And does that bring something out of him? "Every beat makes you tell a story. If it feels sunny, or it feels rainy – or if it feels like somebody got murdered – I know where to go with it, to take you down that road."

The story of Twelve Reasons To Die goes deep. Conceived by Younge as a giallo-style thriller set in 60s Italy, the narrative will be explicated by a six-issue comic series released throughout 2013. Illustrated by artists including Breno Tamura, Matt Rosenberg and Gus Storms, it's a supernatural-tinged tale of Mafia intrigue in which the soul of a murdered gangster, Tony Starks (Ghostface's regular alter ego), is bound up in 12 pieces of mystical vinyl. Spin the records and Starks returns from the grave as Ghostface, with revenge on his mind.

'When you in the mosque, talking to a Muslim, they're the nicest people you ever met on the planet. Don't matter what colour you are: white, black, Asian – they gonna treat you the same'

For all the street-level rawness of his subject matter, there has long been something Forbidden Planet-friendly about Ghostface: his 1996 solo debut Ironman was named after the Marvel superhero, while in 2007, he was immortalised as an action figure with 14-carat medallion, retailing for a cool $500. It is slightly surprising, then, to find he is ambivalent about the comic medium. "I wasn't really a deep-rooted comic-book dude," he says. "I grew up around my cousin who had plenty fucking comic books… Thor, Nova, Daredevil – shit like that."

He didn't have a hand in the comic books, he says; instead, Younge would send him plot points and Ghostface would weave them into verse. Like a director and an actor, or a director and a scriptwriter? Ghostface stares, unblinking: "I'm the hit man."

But these days, Ghostface has a different kind of almighty power in mind. As far back as 2004, he was talking about his interest in Islam. But of late, his faith has intensified: in a recent interview, he revealed he wanted to "write a God album". Many Muslims call Islam a religion of peace; its detractors call it a religion of violence. As a man who has written about conflict and struggle, how does he see his faith?

"For the most part, Islam is about peace," he says. "It's dealing with submission to the most high. Mohammed is a prophet, a messenger. But at the same time, we'll fight in the name of Allah. We're not going to let you disrespect our prophet. America, we got a lot of shit with us. We always butting into other people's business. I ain't gonna front: we're bullies.

His face lightens. "But when you in the mosque, talking to a Muslim, they're the nicest people you ever met on the planet. Don't matter what colour you are, white, black, Asian – they gonna treat you the same. The day I walked in a mosque, I felt like I belonged there. I felt cleanliness. And I know this is where I belong, because I never felt like this in my life."

A God-fearing Ghostface: it's an unexpected plot twist. But maybe after 20 years of spinning tales from every angle, he's found a story to call his own. "Knowledge is infinite," he says. "You can go anywhere you want to go, based on feeling and emotion. That's one of the things God gave me, being able to pull people into that direction. That's just what I do."



Twelve Reasons To Die is out in the UK now; the comic's first issue is out 29 May