- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Everything about Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Pt. II demands worship and solidifies Raekwon as one of history's best with a continuation that exceeds his original debut in every way imaginable.
-
Raekwon pays further homage to his late friend’s memory by releasing a tour de force that honors both the legacies of Wu-Tang Clan and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx.
-
All hotly (strangely this descriptor seems almost an understatement) anticipated albums should deliver so profoundly.
-
His timing, precision, and craftsmanship in regards to everything having to do with this project has been impeccable. It's not a classic. But it's damn close.
-
Fundamentally, though, the album is a wistful and occasionally melancholic one that is as consistently captivating in its lyrical content as it is wonderfully dark and eerily melodic in its composition and production.
-
I love it the same way I love looking at signatures in my yearbooks: as distant reminders of past friends and better times. Sure, this album is awesome, but the fact remains that this is a continuation of an old idea in lieu of a new one.
-
Only Built for Cuban Linx...Pt. 2 is top-to-bottom brilliant, and it's energy and emotion is too infectious not to inspire a dozen great hip-hop records to come.
-
It’s the often perfect synthesis between lyrical content and production on OB4CLII that makes the album simply sublime.
-
Like Ghostface's modern classic, this album defies hip-hop's current atmosphere of youthful cockiness and aging complacency: instead, it's driven by the sometimes celebratory, sometimes traumatized sense of stubborn survival and perseverance, a veteran mindset that can no longer picture success without having to defend it.
-
The album drags at points; with 22 tracks and a 70-minute runtime, some of this material would have been better off on a mixtape. But that’s a minor flaw in an otherwise superbly-executed gangster epic.
-
One can't fairly make the claim that "Pt. II" picks up right where the original left off, but this is the best Raekwon we've heard lyrically and musically in a long time, and barring a late entry this should be the best Wu-Tang related album of 2009.
-
Raekwon has not made a valid sequel to that classic--but he has quite validly added a couple hundred new bars to that performance.
-
This sequel may have little to do with the original, but if the title helps to point out this is the Shaolin poet's best work since 1995's Pt. 1, then so be it.
-
It doesn’t reflect a lack of evolution, or even a regression, but rather the completion of a circle--and probably a landing pad, even as the world continues to whiz by.
-
This one will make heads from Shaolin to San Diego happy.
-
Over the years, his raps grew less engrossing and his albums bombed atomically. But he’s back on point with OB4CL2, sounding as fierce and focused as ever.
-
MojoIndelible, compulsive, flecked with genuine brillance throughout, it's as good as any of the acknowledged clasics from the Clan's '93-96 peak. [Nov 2009, p.95]
-
While the songs may lack the original’s wild-eyed narrative, they still contain some of his most rewind-worthy bars in years.
-
Working almost like a glorified mixtape, many of the tracks bleed together or start mid-scene with field recordings of corner action. It adds to the feeling that you’ve dropped in on something important.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 117 out of 130
-
Mixed: 5 out of 130
-
Negative: 8 out of 130
-
Aug 18, 2010
-
LennyM.Dec 7, 2009
-
Mar 28, 2017