Between the two best albums in Raekwon's discography, there are so many mixtapes that if you're not careful, you might even get lost. This is one of those released in 2009, we were getting closer and closer to the release of Purple Tape 2 and the Wu-Tang's MC wanted to keep the hype as high as possible. For this purpose, he releases a tape of 25 short tracks: half are skits, freestyles and recycled tracks from previous mixtapes, the other half is presumably original. Guests are Nore, Joell Ortiz, AZ, Busta Rhymes, Uncle Murda, Twista, Jadakiss, The Game and B-Real.
The production is accessible, the drum doesn't bother, the loops are melodic and the rap of the performers is regular, Raekwon has a calm style close to spoken word, the other performers don't exaggerate: even Chicago rapper Twista appears contained in "A Bigger Gun", a good joint where he eventually lets go of some rapid-fire. Over the course of the tape, there's space for various rappers, some better known, others up-and-coming, Noreaga and Joell Ortiz make a good impression in "Beauty", and in the finale a couple of West Coast emcees arrive. "Whips & Kicks" and "Gutterman Music" should be some of the best songs, there are AZ and Jadakiss respectively, instead, these are passable and generic tracks that do nothing to stand out among the rest of the tape. The boys' rap is decent, but the beats have nothing memorable about them, and that's the last thing you expect from a mixtape, that is a platform that allows you to [censured] music from any artist without having to worry about having to burn the cassettes (any reference to the ABBA that become your generic chipmunk soul sample is purely coincidental). Overall, it's not too different from previous mixtapes, it's a bit generic and doesn't fully satisfy. Of all these tapes released in anticipation of that album, the only one worth exploring is the last one, "Cuban Revolution", which shares the same colors and feeling of epicness of the sequel.
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