Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II

Hip-hop has been undergoing something of an image shift over the past few years. Kanye West might be to blame, his verbiose and hopeful rhyming sitting quite comfortably with his 808 loving MOR listeners. Or maybe it’s the inimitable Jay-Z, lazy and limp in his old age (the excellent Black Album excepted), supporting Coldplay of all people.

Yes, it exists, and yes, it's as good as fans have been hoping for. We'll get more in depth on that shortly, but with the two most important questions surrounding this album finally answered after four years of anticipation, that leaves a third one: why a sequel? The easy conclusion is that Raekwon needed a benchmark-- that he couldn't just put together any slapdash collection of skits and weedcarrier features and b-grade beats, then slap the words Cuban Linx on the cover. So while some people might read this album's title as a gimmicky ho ok to lure in bring-NYC-back nostalgists, it actually acts more as a reassuring seal of quality from an MC who some people think lost his way the moment he released Immobilarity without a single RZA beat.