Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... cover

Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...

Released

Argue about the parentage of “Mafioso rap” all you want, but it’s without question that Raekwon’s ’95 solo debut set the bar so high that Shaq would have a hard time touching it. Rae and co-billed Ghostface Killah mastered a vision of high-crime storytelling that made the tragedies inseparable from the triumphs, while the litany of top-tier guest verses from other Wu members and RZA’s most dramatically vivid scene-setting collections of beats proved that their collective steel had only gotten sharper since ’93. The rap-sheet intricacy of “Criminology” alone makes the Scarface it samples seem Disney by comparison.

Nate Patrin

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