Baller's Envy

Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...

Ok. Here's one for the vaults. Everybody should know this album. The Rza has described this album as his gangsta record. WTF else can be said?

As cohesive as Liquid Swords. If you don't know that album, you maybe should step back a bit to that. I'm not speaking in terms of the chronological order of when the records dropped so much as what is the best introduction. Liquid Swords is like if Monet painted one of those huge multi paneled canvases of, bear with me, instead of water lilies he painted the physical and psychological lay of the urban landscape - Monet's paintings are amazing, but you have to see them in person to really understand why. You might see a print on a christmas card or something and say, oh that's nice, whatever, but you don't realize that the actual canvas is huge, like fifteen feet across, and if you see it in person you can see that the brush strokes are really broad - If you stand within five feet of the actual canvas you just see the wide swaths of paint. If you creep back an inch or two at a time, it slowly comes into focus. It's a crazy thing, as artistic achievements go, and the first round of Wu Tang solo records are like that. But Cuban Linx and Liquid Swords show one side of the coin and then the other. Genius shit.

I hear bones of alot of these beats in parts of the first Ol Dirt album. That's nothing but a good thing. I'd go and figure out what tracks I hear what in and tell yall but, honestly, I'm smooving down with Billy Xane at this moment so that's the best I can do.

PS - You might have noticed that this post is short on links. In all honesty, I feel dumb having to link to, say, the Wu Tang or RZA or GZA or Dirty wikipedia entries - If you don't Know about these records then you OWE me YOUR time. I just saved your soul - go look that shit up. You owe yourself, you just don't know it yet.