Off the back of the new RAEKWON album – Only Built For Cuban Linx II, Wu-Tang Clan’s hottest MC hits Australia for the first time solo and ready to deliver all his Wu-Tang classics!

At a time when many critics have mistaken hip-hop's state of creative flux for the genre's final flatline, it seems simultaneously fitting and frustrating that a sequel to a 14-year-old album is one of the few things everyone can come close to agreeing upon. The long-awaited successor to Raekwon's groundbreaking solo debut doesn't push the art of hip-hop any further outside the boundaries of classic 1990s East Coast lyricism or production-- in fact, it doesn't point the way to an exciting new future or direction for the genre much at all. It's an album for people who are comfortable with the way rap sounded in the mid-90s, a work of high-caliber Wu-Tang fan service that acts as a 71-minute buffer zone between the listener and the splintering, agitated state of rap in 2009.

But Only Built For Cuban Linx II doesn't need to push things forward-- it builds upwards, using old foundations to create a permanent monument. Whether Rae, Ghost, Deck, RZA, and the rest of the album's star-studded cast represent a bygone era or not becomes irrelevant once the atmosphere sinks in: this is one of those records where everyone seems hellbent on proving why they're still here and why they still matter. The stories of betrayal, despair, remembrance, and celebration that they tell are relentlessly gripping, and set to the most impressive collection of beats gathered in one place all year; six of the contributing producers can lay claim to being all-time greats. It might not sound like the future, but it'll always be worth going back to. -- Nate Patrin. Raekwon’s Only Built for Cuban Linx II voted Pitchfork’s #5 album of 2009, and major hip hop site HipHopDx voted Raekwon album and emcee of the year.