Pusha-T Travels To Shaolin To Explain The Importance Of Raekwon’s Purple Tape (Video)

23 Years of Raekwon's The Purple Tape

On 8/01/1995 founding Wu-Tang member Raekwon released his solo debut, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... At the time, Raekwon's album was one of many individual Wu-Tang Clan releases hitting the market but it quickly rose in stature and many fans consider it the single best solo Wu-Tang album of all time. 

However, when it first came out, Raekwon wasn't at the top of the Wu-Tang pecking order and as he told interviewers with 3 Little Digs, he wanted his album to stand out against the typical pile of tapes that collected on the floors of people's cars. Though Loud Records humored Rae's request, they supposedly only did so for the first 10,000 cassettes, inadvertently guaranteeing that it'd fall into the hands of the most fervent Raekwon/Wu-Tang fans. As time went by, to describe Only Built as The Purple Tape was a sly form of oneupmanship since it meant, "I was first in line to own this."*

[*excerpt from NPR]

Method Man - The Purple Tape ft. Raekwon, Inspectah Deck (Official Music Video)

Method Man teams up with  Raekwon and Inspectah Deck to drop off the official video for ‘The Purple Tape’ off his latest album The Meth Lab which was released back in August.

Raekwon and Diadora Collaborate to Celebrate One of Hip-Hop's Greatest Albums of All-Time

Packer Shoes has officially unveiled the collaboration along with the release date of August 20 at New York City's S.O.B.'s.

Check the images below:

On August 1, 1995 Raekwon forever changed the course of music history with the release of his debut solo album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… The groundbreaking project has been enjoyed by fans, celebrated by music critics and studied by contemporary scholars for almost 20 years. Listed by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the “Top 500 Albums of All Time,” Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… is consistently praised for its cinematic qualities and unforgettable storyline. The ultimate conceptual album, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… is credited with ushering in the mafioso sub-genre of Hip Hop, and subsequently laying the blueprint for classic albums to follow from Jay-Z, Nas and the Notorious B.I.G.

With “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…” celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year, it was only right to combine our efforts and and apply it to a staple shoe from one of the shared-favorite brands of both Rae and Packer over the years with the ade in Italy Packer x Raekwon x Diadora N.9000 “Purple Tape”.

 

The co-branded Packer x Raekwon x Diadora tongue label is direct drawback to the “Parental Advisory” tag featured on the explicit version of OB4CL with “1995” side embroidery paying homage to the release year of the album. Additional features include “side 1″ & “side 2″ embroidery rear of both shoes and corresponding album track listing both footbeds, clear purple tinted rubber outsoles, metallic silver midsole and 4 shoe lace options sure to make the tape “pop”.

 

 Please stay tuned to PackerShoes.com and SOBs.com for additional release and show details.

[via Packer Shoes]

Raekwon Is Releasing a Snow Beach-Inspired Jacket to Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of "The Purple Tape"

Twenty years ago, Raekwon dropped his debut solo album, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, sometimes also referred to as "The Purple Tape." Twenty years, damn. To celebrate, the rapper and member of the almighty Wu-Tang Clan, is releasing a jacket inspired by something equally as familiar. 

The Linx Beach jacket, made in collaboration with Raekwon's company CL95 Inc., takes cues from Polo Ralph Lauren's iconic Snow Beach jacket, which Rae wore in the "Can It Be So Simple" video, and arguably made popular. 

The Linx Beach jacket, priced at $599, is available for pre-order at CL95.com now. Orders will ship Aug. 1.

[via COMPLEX]

Raekwon and Ghostface Killah Will Review Your Mixtape If You Donate $200 for the "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx" Documentary

Instead of blowing up music writers' mentions or the comment sections you can guarantee ears for your mixtape for a mere $200. Raekwon and Ghostface Killah will review all tracks submitted if you donate to their crowdfunding campaign for the Only Built 4 Cuban Linx documentary. The two will also select their favorite artists from the bunch to attend a studio session in which they offer more creative input. 

Raekwon and Ghostface announced The Purple Tape Files in January at Sundance. Produced by Raekwon's Third Eye Vision production company, the documentary will focus on the impact of his seminal, debut album. The crowdfunding campaign will last for 60 days, and the documentary is expected to be completed in August, the 20th anniversary of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx.

http://www.fanbacked.com/c/purple-tape-files/

Sundance Needs More Wu-Tang: Raekwon and Ghostface Reveal Upcoming Documentary, "Purple Tape Files"

Sundance 2015 was pretty much the last place we expected to run into two of the founding members of the Wu-Tang Clan. But, thankfully, we had the chance to sit down with Raekwon and Ghostface Killah about their upcoming documentary Purple Tape Files. The still very hush, hush doc dropped a preview which charts the release of the seminal 1995 release of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx and the impact of the now classic record. 

[via COMPLEX]

Wu-Art Thursday #31

Every Thursday we will be posting up pics of Wu-Tang artwork from fans, artists and aliens. If you have artwork you would like to share, please email us at: WuArtTats@gmail.com 

By Jeremy Hill

By Jesse Dawber - www.sketchytank.com

By Leann Wekamp

By Meagan Greenberg

Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (Deluxe "Purple Tape" Cassette Boxset - Ltd. to 1000!)

On August 1, 1995, RCA Records dropped Raekwon's now classic Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. The first 10,000 cassette copies (according to legend), were cased in a brilliant purple. An instant collectors item, and impetus for a nickname, the tape remains one of most creative packaging choices in hip-hop history.

Get On Down celebrates creativity. The small brand, established in 2010 by record industry veterans Matt Welch and Joe Mansfield, is giving hip-hop fans reason to celebrate legendary records and forgotten classics. Majors hadn't been pushing rap beyond regular reissues and, as Mansfield says, Get On Down was formed as a way of "presenting releases in a really fresh way, as far as innovative packaging and cool bonus material."
They started with Common's Resurrection and then blew the doors open with a brilliant idea for ODB's Return to the 36 Chambers, recreating the food stamp card on the the original cover, reminding of the power of music and its associated objects to entice us beyond disposable download culture. "That one to me had so many different parts from different manufacturers, and when it came together it was really exciting," says Matt Welch, "It made people take notice of what we were doing."

Since ODB, they've reworked GZA's Liquid Swords with a chess set and now adds to the Get On Down Master Series with the "Purple Tape Cassette Box."

The full-length audio from the original is set in actual Purple Tape and housed in a "piano lacquer" display case with gold-color hardware and embossed white-on-black Raekwon logo. In addition to the tape, the box set includes a 32-page, hard-cover liner notes book with text by Brian Coleman and reprinted graphics from the original Loud/RCA promotional singles.

The cassette-only Only Built 4 Cuban Linx "Purple Tape Cassette Box" reissue is limited to 1,000 copies available exclusively from today at Get Down for $44.95.

Classics Revisited #2: The Purple Tape

This will bring back great memories for those old enough to remember, and for the younger fans, something to think about as they already heard about this.
The Purple Tape aka Only Built 4 Cuban Linx is a tasty morsal of golden age rap memorabilia, Why were the tapes Purple? how valuable and reare is it?
Apparently on 10,000 of these Tapes were ever made. I have seen a sealed one go on eBay for about $5k in 2010.

Personal research suggest that the first purple polyphonic product was The Pixies first demo, which was released in 1987. It was nicknamed The Purple Tape by Pixie fans because it was (surprise, surprise) purple. However, there is no real proof that this tape was actually tinted purple. Meaning that a more apporpriate title might have been “the clear tape with the purple case”.

Next came Lisa Loeb’s demo (what’s up with demos and the color purple?) in 1991. Which for all you LL fans (no Todd Smith aka LL Cool J), has been remastered and re-released sometime in 2008. There is also no concrete proof that this cassette were coloured purple be it previously or re-release.  Oh yeah, Lisa Loeb’s current release is called the Purple Tape CD (wack).

This all leads to the release of Only Built for Cuban Linx in 1995 (AKA the Only Real Purple Tape). Luckily record companies were still making tapes, and even luckilier (is that a word?) Raekwon requested that his tape be purple. Good call Rae…

So why did Rae call it the purple tape?
Lets first look at the title of the album, according to Wikipedia 'The album's title serves as "a warning of its musical potency to those not prepared for the uncut raw contained within." Although the original intended title was "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Niggaz", this idea was eventually dismissed in favor of a more market-friendly one. Ghostface Killah later specified "We already had the title. The chain we used to rock back in the days was Cuban links. So Rae came up with the theory, like a Cuban link is one of the roughest chains to break. Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Real niggas, strong niggas."

The purple Tape in reference to the album was because the original cassette's plastic was entirely purple; Raekwon marked the tape distinctively as a reference to drug dealers' method of tagging their product, to distinguish it from that of others'. "I wanted to portray an image that if I was selling crack or dimes in the street, you would recognize these dimes from other niggas' dimes.
This was confirmed on an interview Rae did with AllHiphop.com

"AllHipHop.com: Where’d you get the idea to come out with [Only Built 4 Cuban Linx as] a purple tape? I thought it was a defect when I got mine.?

Raekwon: Only because being that we from the block, we was finagling in certain situations where the things that you was dealing with had to be separated from what everybody else was dealing with. I always ran with that as one of my traits in anything I do to separate myself from others. Back when we used to sling and do what we do, we would have certain color caps [to viles]. Certain color caps resembled certain people that were doing s**t different than everybody else. It’s like, “Yo, this is our color. Anybody step on this color, you got an issue at that time.” So I decided with my music, this is my world—this is my thing and I wanna put a color on it just so everybody will know. That’s how the purple tape even came in existence. I think I had wanted a red one at first and then I thought how somebody else had did it already. I made it like that specifically…."

Indeed.. The album from cover art, concept, packaging was all thought through, the music (production, features, lyrics, subject matter etc) was also thought through, this is what makes this album a classic and what makes the Wu-Tang Clan the best collective to ever emerge from Hip-Hop.
The album was loosely composed to play like a film with Raekwon as the "star," fellow Wu-Tang member Ghostface Killah as the "guest-star," and producer RZA as the "director.' It features appearances from every member of the Wu-Tang Clan, and served as an introduction to Cappadonna.  It also features an acclaimed guest appearance from rapper Nas, which marked the first collaboration with a non-affiliated artist on a Wu-Tang related album.

In 2012, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Cuban Linx number 480 on their updated version of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Need I say more?

Long Live The Purple Tape!!!
Long Life Wu-Tang!!!
Wu-Tang 4 Ever!!!

Check back every last week sunday of the month another Wu-Tang classic Revisted.

Put Together by Dark7 for Wu-International.com