Was there a degree of pressure to equal them? How nervous were you going into those sessions? You were batting third for Wu-Tang solo albums, and obviously Method Man and ODB both had some pretty big singles on theirs. So it’s a moment that will always be with me because it was a time when I really wanted to impress the masses, and to see the album still have life 25 years later is a blessing. This album has been a blueprint to a lot of that. I think this album has been a trailblazer for a lot of people’s careers, a lot of people’s fashion, a lot of people’s style in the game. That time was just about me being able to do a solo record that would allow me to be one of the elites in the game, so it definitely brings back good memories. It’s a great feeling because it brings back so many moments in my life, even outside of music. How does it feel to think about “Cuban Linx” turning 25? Did you ever imagine you’d still be doing interviews about it a quarter century later? He recently spoke with Variety about the album’s legacy. Now 50, Raekwon will mark the quarter century anniversary on Friday with an Instagram Live conversation with Ghostface, as well as a double vinyl instrumental edition planned for release in the fall. “Cuban Linx’s” overall narrative might not have always been clear-cut, but its details were as rich as any of the cinematic landmarks that had inspired it, offering an entrancingly strange, cracked-kaleidoscope snapshot of the New York underworld. Most importantly, the album’s use of language took the Wu’s already opaque signature slang and elevated it into the sort of endlessly self-referential, cabalistic argot that fans could spend years trying to fully decipher. (Take Mike Lavogna, the fictional kingpin figure whom Raekwon brings so vividly to life in a single verse, right down to the name of his pet fish, only to dismiss his eventual death with a curt, “His ass is out now, tallyho.”) The between-song dialogue might see Rae and Ghost describing a shootout, or talking about the weather, or devising DIY color schemes for their shoes. There were intricate webs of Cosa Nostra-inspired aliases and a whole network of sharply-sketched minor characters. created an entirely self-contained universe with its own distinctive vernacular and twisted moral codes, then trusted you to find your way around by intuition alone. “Cuban Linx” is a classic gangsta rap album, one of the greatest ever made, but to simply call it that would be like calling “A Clockwork Orange” a great crime novel. And rather than hog the spotlight, he allotted a generous portion of the album’s running time to his bandmate Ghostface Killah (credited as a “co-star” on the album’s cover), whose volatile energy and Pollock-like splatters of abstract imagery made him a perfect sidekick, the Pesci to Raekwon’s De Niro. Instead, he envisioned “Cuban Linx” as a dense, cinematic concept album, inspired by films like Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America” and John Woo’s “The Killer,” that would follow two drug dealers who resolve to pull off one last big score before going straight. But for his first solo outing, Raekwon had higher ambitions than simply out-rapping his regional peers. Hailing from Staten Island’s Park Hill neighborhood, Raekwon the Chef was one of the clear standouts on “36 Chambers,” and his complex story-songs and blustery delivery made him the group’s most likely candidate to compete with the likes of Nas and the Notorious B.I.G., whose confrontational hustler-poet styles were ascendant in New York hip-hop. The first two out of the gate, Method Man and Ol’ Dirty Bastard, each notched hit crossover singles with their respective debuts, but Raekwon’s “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…,” released 25 years ago this week, was something else entirely. It helped that these weren’t solo albums in the typical sense of the term: Though each member of the Clan had been given the freedom to sign their own separate label deals outside the contractual confines of the Wu, all of their early solo records featured plentiful guest spots from the rest of the group, and every album was produced almost entirely by Wu-Tang founder the RZA, then in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime creative spree. Though the tag-team posse cuts like “Protect Ya Neck” and “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’” established Wu-Tang in the public imagination, it was only when the individual members got a chance to strike out on their own that the collective’s uncommon diversity of talent really came to the fore. It’s hard to think of many groups in any genre of music that have been so much more than just the sum of their parts.
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