[2] 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".

[6] Although it failed to acquire the same initial sales success as previous Wu-Tang solo albums, Cuban Linx achieved greater critical praise, with many complimenting its cinematic lyricism and production.

Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... has received acclaim from music critics and writers over the years, with many lauding it as one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time.

With its emphasis on American Mafia insinuations and organized crime, the album is widely regarded as a pioneer of the mafioso rap subgenre.

The song "Can It Be All So Simple", from 36 Chambers, marked the first recorded exhibition of Raekwon and Ghostface Killah as a duo, as the two would further establish this alliance on Only Built 4 Cuban Linx.... Much of the content on the album deals with real life topics and situations that both Raekwon and Ghostface Killah commonly encountered and experienced while growing up in Staten Island, New York.

It also features a guest appearance from rapper Nas, making this the first collaboration with a non-affiliated artist on a Wu-Tang related album.

"[10] 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.

"[10] Seeking to musically express Raekwon's blend of Five Percenter creed and inner-city experience, producer RZA worked intensively on a polished sound, slower and more layered than that of Wu-Tang's previous efforts, using strings, piano loops and vocal samples from Kung Fu movies, and Mafia films.

Due to Raekwon's storytelling, mobster-minded approach, the producer set up Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... to play like scenes in a crime movie.

In an article for XXL, RZA later illustrated "The theme of the album is two guys that had enough of the negative life and was ready to move on, but had one more sting to pull off.

"[10] In keeping with this loose storyline, the album opens with the introduction track "Striving for Perfection", in which Raekwon and "co-star" Ghostface converse about visions and goals.

[10] On the proceeding track "Knuckleheadz", Raekwon and Ghostface divide money in the song's intro, and then engage in a heist, with U-God's character being killed off at the end of his verse.

[10] Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... features dialogue-driven interludes in the beginning of several tracks with Raekwon and Ghostface Killah conversing about money, life, crime, and hip hop, among other things.

The introduction to "Glaciers of Ice", for instance, involves Ghostface addressing his plans and methods of dyeing Wallabee-styled Clarks.

[10] In a 2005 interview, Ghostface Killah explained "We was in the car one day, driving around with the DAT machine with a microphone and we just started talking shit about how we're gonna do it this summer with the Clarks.

"[10] Though several songs, such as "Glaciers of Ice" and "Incarcerated Scarfaces", received radio play and music video treatment, only four official singles were released for Only Built 4 Cuban Linx....

The Source magazine's Nicholas Poluhoff said "Raekwon has always brought his own special flavor to the Wu cipher: he sprays out lyrics like gunfire, forming vivid tales.

In a genre characterized by singles, Cuban Linx is a full-blown album where the big picture is just as moving as the compositional stylistic elements.

"[18] In Vibe magazine, Dream Hampton was impressed by Raekwon and Ghostface Killah's use of cultural appropriation (as a type of "sweet vindication") in their lyrics and said they "bring the best in each other.

"[14] Spin magazine labeled Only Built 4 Cuban Linx as the 83rd-best album of the 1990s, describing it as an "epic, cinema-scale crime drama" that was "far ahead of hip-hop's conceptual curve".

[10] While this style was originated by Kool G Rap in the late 1980s, it didn't completely permeate the hip hop world until the release of OB4CL in 1995.

For instance, the album refers to "Wu-Gambinos" in various occurrences; the term being a name for the 'alter-egos' of the rappers involved in Cuban Linx, and used on various later projects.

These alter-egos inspired an already dissociative hip-hop world to adopt new names and personae, from Nas' Escobar moniker to Notorious B.I.G.

A known fan of the Wu, Tupac Shakur began to refer to himself as Makaveli and gave his Outlawz crew new names, albeit with a militaristic, dictatorial theme.

"[10] Another exemplification of Cuban Linx's influence is in the spike in popularity of Cristal, an expensive champagne, which was mentioned on the album and touted by Rae and Ghost.

[10] The brand even made its way into popular culture when director Quentin Tarantino, a known affiliate of RZA and the Wu-Tang Clan, goes on a rant about the champagne's quality in his segment of Four Rooms, a film released in the months after Raekwon's album.

"[10] Ironically enough, despite Raekwon and Ghost's warning on "Shark Niggas (Biters)" to "be original", OB4CL's influence spawned a countless number of albums with many of the adopted principles that it set in place.

[10] Jay-Z would later reference Cuban Linx in his 2009 song "A Star Is Born" by stating "Wu-Tang gangbanged it, Meth ate / Rae took on a date with the Purple Tape / passed it on to Ason, then Ghostface / they had a hell of a run, stand and ovate."

1996 also saw the releases of Ghostface Killah's debut album Ironman, which loosely covers some of the topics on Cuban Linx, and also Mobb Deep's second major-label album, Hell on Earth, which showcased the duo's interpretation of the Cuban Linx demeanor, and featured contributions from Raekwon, Method Man, and Nas.

"[3] After two solo projects that were both critically and commercially unsuccessful, Raekwon announced a sequel to Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... in late 2005.