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]
