Raekwon - Only Built for Cuban Linx (feat Ghostface Killah)

Rainy Dayz - Raekwon ft. Ghostface Killah/Blue Raspberry

Freakin tune! Check those beats. Ghostface's opening lines pretty much highlight my point as to why he works so well on this album.

I want to preface this review by saying that there’s also a bit in here about ‘Cuban Linx 2’, the follow up to this album, and how I’m interpreting the importance of the interplay between good MCs and producers. Let’s have a chat if you’ve got any ideas or think I’m full of shit.

I’ve been getting into a big Wu-Tang hip-hop phase lately and my adventures have taken my ears down some new and exciting avenues. So far I’ve gone through Enter the Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang Forever, GZA’s Liquid Swords, Ghostface’s most recent 12 reasons to die, half way through Ghostface’s Supreme Clientele and got through Only Built 4 Cuban Linx pt.2… along with this album.

Now before I started listening to it, I read that it received rave reviews, and was comparatable to GZA’s Liquid Swords as a strong competitor for one of the greatest Wu-Tang solo efforts, if not hip-hop albums of the 90s. A lot of reviewers, magazines and the like will confirm this, both reviews that were contemporary to the album’s release and several retrospective reviews.

But shit man, I don’t know! I really don’t know.

Honestly, a lot of what I found good on this album came from Ghostface’s work on the album. Every song where he featured, every line he spat, absolute gold. Now there’s a lot of his input, he’s a major collaborator on the album, but I think it fell a little bit short compared to the rest of the Wu-Tang stuff I’ve been hearing.

The album sprawls for a lengthy 18 tracks and a lot of it is good, well produced and full of interesting lyrical themes, other featured Wu-Tang artists and was considered ground-breaking at the time, but I can’t enjoy Raekwon’s rapping as much as other Wu-Tang artists. I think he’s good at what he does, but half the brilliance of the other Wu-Tang artists comes from the fact that they work really well with each-other, but above all with RZA’s heavy drum and smooth sampling approach to production. Maybe what really got me here is the length of the album – 18 tracks is difficult to sling while keeping fresh and original, and while the start and the finish of the album has some solid tracks, there’s a bit in the middle that I couldn’t enjoy. I also wasn’t too sure that ‘Can it be all so simple’ really needed that remix.

That said, there’s some tracks where it all works really well. Incarcerated Scarfaces is a smooth track and Raekwon hit the nail on the head with that one. Rainy Dayz is well produced, catchy as hell and Ghostface’s opening rap is smoothly delivered. There’s a reason this album is considered a classic, I just don’t believe it’s on the same level as Liquid Swords.

Now that said, go check out Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2. It was actually a really good, albeit different (thanks to the difference in 90s and late 2000s production) album. What’s more, Rae’s rapping is way easier to get, either he’s learned out to enunciate or the production was so well done that it made him more audible than this album. Maybe both! Sadly though, not a lot of people heard the album and while critically it deserves the praise it got, Hip-hop has taken an ugly turn in the space between the release of both albums meaning it got largely ignored.