(The acronym breaks down as U Black Niggas Network, and it's channel 95 if you're in the Raleigh area.) The rhymes that follow are quick to criticize and spoof African-American music industry marketing tactics while also lamenting the group's own outsider status. It's a platform Phonte, Big Pooh and 9th Wonder used to broadcast a satirical concept album based around the UBN TV station. The mafiosa trend quickly became played out during the years that followed, but there's nothing corny or cliched going on with Rae's debut album-it's just a masterclass of cinematic rap music.Īfter the success of the indie rap classic The Listening in 2003, the North Carolina trio of Little Brother found themselves in the unlikely situation of being offered a major label deal by Atlantic. Recasting themselves as Lou Diamonds and Tony Starks, the duo paint dramatic scenes like Rae's 16 shots shattering rival coke dealer Mike Lavonia's piranha fish tank on "Knowledge God," and Ghost's Beretta threatening to "splatter your Goose, scatter your feathers" on "Guillotine (Swordz)." These crime rhymes go down against RZA's musical backdrop that becomes an exercise in mystical mood music. The genius of the album is the way it takes a broad narrative-in this case hustlers plotting one last big score before getting out of the drug game-and brings it to life with vivid and violent details. When Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… was released in 1995, the album inspired a whole generation of rappers to cast themselves as mafia figures operating in organized crime rings-but no one did it as evocatively as Rae and his capo Ghostface Killah.
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