Raekwon: Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (2LP) [LOUD/LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set is cut from the metalwork of the 2016 Music On Vinyl reissue and pressed in the EU. The album debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, has gone platinum, and Rolling Stone ranked it No. 219 on its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Every Wu-Tang solo album had its own personality, and Raekwon's arrived as a full-length crime movie. He plays Lex Diamonds, Ghostface Killah co-stars as Tony Starks, and RZA scored the whole thing in his Staten Island basement studio from late 1994 to mid-1995, handling the engineering himself with no assistants. The stories come from the pair's own years growing up in Staten Island, told with a lived-in detail that RZA said was the point.

"Criminology" and "Incarcerated Scarfaces" set the scene, "Ice Cream" and "Wu-Gambinos" bring in Method Man, and "Guillotine (Swordz)" hands Inspectah Deck a verse. "Verbal Intercourse" features Nas, the first guest from outside the Wu-Tang family, who said the sessions grew out of casual trips from Queensbridge to Staten Island. "Can It Be All So Simple" returns as a remix, a nod to the song where Rae and Ghost first teamed up, and the album introduces Cappadonna along the way.

Its mafioso storytelling echoed through Reasonable Doubt and Life After Death, and alongside GZA's Liquid Swords it stands as the most acclaimed solo Wu-Tang work. The original 10,000 cassettes came in purple plastic before RCA switched to clear, so the nickname has comfortably outlived the tape, which is more than most of us can say for our cassettes.

Also at Kops: more Raekwon on vinyl · browse Hip Hop / R&B

Tracklist

Listen

On Loud / RCA / Legacy (cat# 19958414041), a reissue of the 1995 album.