Fourteen years ago, Shallah Raekwon released the original Purple Tape. This potent blend of lucid storytelling and austere production instantly turned every hip-hop fan into a sniveling, neck-scratching fiend. Rae had us running feverishly to the record store in torn sweatpants for a fix. Like any powerful product, his brand of vivid criminology was imitated, watered down, co-opted, and blueprinted thousands of times by thousands of lesser (and sometimes equal) pushers. But also like any powerful product, Rae knew he had us hooked. That’s why he took his time crafting the second one—so that it could truly meet all of our irrational expectations. He had to wallow in the mire of mid-career mediocrity in order to emerge re-inspired. Just like Frank Lucas’s Blue Magic, Rae could not affix the Cuban Linx label to a lesser product.
Fourteen years later (and it’s hard for me to believe it’s really been that long), we arrive at Cuban Linx 2, probably the most anticipated sequel of the decade. This anticipation, although completely warranted, puts the album in a very demanding spot. Us fiends, ahem, I mean fans, will expect nothing less than perfection. If a flawless album is not produced, we will consider it a failure. However, amongst today’s profound dearth of quality music, we will be quick to hail even a mediocre effort as an instant classic. Juxtaposed against those two opposite backdrops, we will tend to view this album in extremities. That being said, I will try as much as possible to divorce myself from these preconditions and simply see it as a rap album in 2009.
The album itself plays like a Wu album should. Replete with dramatic crime stories, shocking imagery, kung-fu samples, and wallabee references, this is the album Wu fans have been dying to hear for years. The first track, the thumping Dilla produced “Flying Daggers,” features the clan in full form. The chorus, a self-conscious homage flipped from “Clan in Da Front,” reminds us all that despite the missteps and mistakes, the internal divides, they are still very much here. The inexorable energy of this track sets the tone for the album. In all honesty, every track bangs and every verse goes hard. A dream team of producers lend beats in the iconic RZA style so that the album preserves a cohesive mood but avoids becoming stale or repetitive.
Street bangers like Alchemist-laced “Surgical Gloves,” or the LOX-assisted “Broken Safety” are simply gems. With RZA’s dusty drums updated for 2008, the muted snares and pounding bass of these tracks are astounding. Guest verses from P and Jada are the best I’ve heard from them in a while, but Rae’s inscrutable idiosyncrasy outshines everything. The impenetrable RZA grime of “Black Mozart,” which reminds me of an updated “Criminology,” shows that Rae has not lost a step lyrically. He is still adept as ever at weaving fragmented street yarns among shit-talk, fashion, and esoteric intellectualism. His penchant for penetrating detail shines as he raps, “champion hood, the goodies in the brown bag, by the radiator, near the cookies and the bundles of dope.” The full length narratives like “Sonny’s Missing,” “Fat Lady Sings,” and “We Will Rob You,” evince Rae’s quintessential ability to seamlessly merge disjointed images into a unnervingly clear depiction of street life. On “Fat Lady Sings,” Rae employs jarring similes to describe a harrowing street brawl, rhyming “gillette soldier, shorty hit the neck, blood squirted/ looked like laundry detergent.”
Rae’s lyrical prowess continues throughout the album, which has an incredible amount of consistency for 21 tracks. On “About Me,” Busta drops in to trade bars with Rae over Dre’s banging minor piano chords. In one of the Chef’s best lyrical performances, he showcases internal rhymes and visual flourishes in lines like “pushin sixes/ rockin wild animals on jackets its sickenin/ hear me, from here to rockaway to cali we flip this/ broad day/ chef sautee/ his lyrics is crispy.” Busta’s guttural flow and Rae’s leathery smooth cadence fit perfectly, making this a standout track.
The jewel of the album, however, is the lead single “New Wu.” Over a stunning track that proves the interminability of RZA’s talent, the Wu elite (Ghost, Rae, and Meth) trade vintage bars that truly bring it back to ’95. The infectious beat consists of only an ethereal two bar vocal loop and some dusty ass drums. Its simplicity compliments the verbosity of Ghost and Rae, who create indescribable tension cramming their bars into the time signature. Here Ghost is at his apex with ingenious rhymes like “forensic file, ultraviolet hype/ sky blue bowls/ layin niggas like ceramic tile.”
After bumping this album on continuous repeat for nearly four days, I can honestly say I have a hard time finding any flaws in it. I guess theoretically length could be cited as the album’s one weakness. For some, 21 straight tracks cryptic gangsterism and sneering basslines may be overwhelming. But the reality is that the variety of production maintains interest, and any track can be bumped in full without the desire to skip. All I can say is that the Chef is really back in the kitchen, and real hip-hop should be on its knees thanking him. For all the complaining that the old guard of the east coast has done in the past few years, no one has really done anything about it, until now.
