And in continuing the multi-angle widescreen crime saga scope of OB4CL…, Raekwon's true talent soars. 'Hood-examining highlight Sonny's Missing is sufficiently vivid to render television's greatest inner city dramatisation, The Wire, as a two-dimensional caricature, lighting up a Pete Rock beat that slinks through shadowy sonic alleyways. The first 10,000 tapes were pressed in the now iconic purple tint that added to the mystique of Raekwon's cinematic mafioso introduction to the rap world. would vault Raekwon up the Wu food chain and eventually become referred to as the Wu's best solo drop. Released in 1995 after the success of Wu's '36 Chambers' debut and solo efforts from ODB and Method Man, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. For the most part, it's the role Ghostface was born to play and when he trades bars with Raekwon on the ominous Penitentiary it's a genuine pleasure to behold. The Purple Tape is the holy grail for golden era hip-hop album collectors. Dr Dre and the late J Dilla bring particular heat alongside, almost inevitably, RZA, despite Raekwon's prior protestations that his crewmate wouldn't feature, after bad blood between the two.Īlso in keeping with the OB4CL… spirit, fellow Wu mic assassin Ghostface Killah reprises his lead guest credit, distinctive urgent delivery snaking around Raekwon's effortlessly flowing wordplay. Broadening the original album's cinematic production spectrum beyond backing from Wu comrade RZA, nigh on every beat calls on big guns without feeling like unit-shifting super producer box-ticking. It's not only Raekwon's A game that is resurrected, either.
Evoking the claustrophobic atmospheres of OB4CL… to the extent it's easy to forget Raekwon is rapping from a contemporary standpoint, he once again animates a drugs-running and violence-filled street life narrative with rare colour and attention to gritty detail. Just as well, then, that it more than lives up to the hype, rolling back that aforementioned decade and a half to recapture sizzling career-defining form. Treading in such lauded footsteps, half-baking Pt. Indeed, this sequel had been mooted so long its status in hip hop circles had become nearly as mythical as Dr Dre's still-unreleased Detox. It's taken the Wu-Tang Clan's slang master Raekwon the thick end of 15 years of inferior albums and market-flooding mixtapes to craft a genuinely worthy follow-up to landmark solo debut Only Built 4 Cuban Linx….
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