Raekwon Taps Dr. Dre, Pete Rock for ‘Cuban Linx 2′

When you put on the biggest hip-hop tour of the year you get some perks, like being among the first to hear Raekwon's highly anticipated 'Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2,' due this year. "He had a lot of music that he came and played in our office and honestly it's amazing," Rock the Bells organizer Chang Weisberg tells The BoomBox.

"'Cuban Linx,' a lot of people think the sequel can never touch the original. This sequel is honestly better; sonically, dynamically, lyrically, cause he worked with different producers. You're going to hear a Raekwon that you haven't heard maybe on the previous record."

Standing right there alongside Weisberg as the promoter gushes on 'Cuban Linx 2,' Raekwon seems totally confident with the hype, as he should be when he has the likes of Dr. Dre, Pete Rock, Marley Marl, the late J. Dilla, and more handling the beats. "When we did the first album, RZA, he's a classic within himself, but I knew there was something more that we needed to make 'Cuban Linx 2,'" Raekwon says.

Making the task of finding beats that much easier, Rae just turned to his friends. "Now a lot of the producers that I named are big fans of the first one and they felt like that was a challenge to be a part of the second one," he says. "My thing is if you fit the bill of what I'm trying to deliver it's all good. It just happened to be that I had a lot of good friends that's like, 'Yo, I want in.'"

With all of those new hands involved does that mean the album will be drastically different than its predecessor? No. "At the end of the day we didn't try to bite the first one," Rae says. "We just tried to add onto the first one with the second one."