Hyper Linx
Raekwon: Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II
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"Yo, Rae? Is that you, baby?" asks Poppa Wu at the outset of Raekwon's long-awaited — and alarmingly consistent and satisfying — sequel to his 1995 masterpiece Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. You can understand some of Poppa Wu's confusion. In the intervening decade and a half, Rae — like nearly all of his Wu-Tang brethren — seemed doomed to aimlessly walk the Earth, cheating out half-assed solo records and grumbling about his misfortunes. It's only been within the last five or so years that the Clan has figured out what, exactly, they're supposed to be doing — which, simply put, is to issue solo records that resemble their old landmarks as much as possible.
Which is exactly the blueprint governing Cuban Linx 2, and is, of course, the chief reason the record works so well. It quite literally picks up where its predecessor left off — at the exact same point in the exact same sample, Poppa Wu midway through the same mad, prophetic rant. From there he tells Raekwon that he had a vision in which he saw the rapper onstage at Madison Square Garden — which is a nice bit of wishful thinking. Cuban Linx II is stubbornly anti-commercial, Rae's gravelly raps grinding against the same degraded soul loops that made its predecessor sound so menacing. Like the original, he's joined on nearly half the tracks by Ghostface Killah, who is happy as ever to play the loose cannon to Rae's calm, calculated criminal. The two of them are occasionally joined by a recently revitalized Method Man, who is somehow a better wordsmith and more charismatic presence than he was in 1997.
There's something comforting in the Wu's willful resistance to changing with the times. Indeed, the year's best rap records — among them, Tanya Morgan's and Mos Def's — are the ones that eschew commercial hip-hop's increasingly banal trends in favor of expert craftsmanship. Cuban Linx II may be a calculated maneuver by an artist growing worried about his bottom line, but that doesn't make it any less thrilling. The only question is: If Raekwon was always capable of this, why did he wait so long?
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