Raekwon

Bio

Raekwon's first solo album is called Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... and is also called the Purple Tape, because the cassette was purple. It came out on Loud Records on August 1, 1995. The Source gave it 5 mics. RZA produced the whole thing. Ghostface Killah was on virtually every track. The album invented mafioso rap as a sustained mode. Every Roc Marciano record, every Westside Gunn record, every Action Bronson record traces back to it. The Purple Tape is the document.

He was born Corey Woods in Brooklyn on January 12, 1970, raised in the Park Hill section of Staten Island alongside RZA, GZA, Method Man, Ghostface, and the rest of the Wu core. He was one of the original nine Wu-Tang Clan members assembled by RZA in 1992. On Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) he is the one whose verses sound like Italian-mob movie monologues compressed into eight bars.

The Cuban Linx persona (Raekwon the Chef, the cooker of crack, the boss-of-bosses voice, the imagery of Italian restaurants and fur coats and "Cristal") is the most influential Wu solo persona, possibly the most influential New York rap persona of the 1990s. It got copied by everybody. Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt (1996) is partially built on Cuban Linx. Nas's It Was Written (1996) is partially built on Cuban Linx. The mafioso rap subgenre that flowered in the late 1990s — Cam'ron, Camp Lo, the Lox, Mobb Deep — owes its sonic and verbal vocabulary to what Raekwon and Ghostface and RZA did on this one record.

Raekwon's subsequent solo career was rocky for a stretch. Immobilarity (1999) and The Lex Diamond Story (2003) underwhelmed. Then Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II came out on Ice H2O in 2009, fourteen years after the original. It is one of the better hip-hop sequels ever attempted. It is also one of the only ones that did not embarrass the original. Pitchfork gave it Best New Music. Raekwon was back.

He has kept working. Fly International Luxurious Art (2015). The Wild (2017). The Bricks (2019). He still tours with Wu-Tang. He still records solo. He has been one of the most stable veterans in the rap game for three decades.

He is, in 2026, fifty-six years old. He is the Chef. He is the patron saint of crime-narrative rap. The Purple Tape is still in print. You can still buy a purple cassette. If you do, you should listen to it. It is the kind of album that gives back as much attention as you give it.