Raekwon is a member of New York’s Wu-Tang Clan. He's done some of the most inventive, critically acclaimed work outside the confines of the group. Also nicknamed the Chef (because he's "cookin' up some marvelous shit to get your mouth watering"), Raekwon joined the Staten Island, NY-based Wu-Tang collective in the early '90s and played an important role on their groundbreaking late-1993 debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Following his 1994 debut single, "Heaven and Hell," his own solo debut, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, appeared in 1995; while it didn't sell on the level of Method Man's Tical, singles like "Ice Cream" and "Criminology" earned him a solid reputation in the hip-hop underground. Moreover, the album received near-unanimous critical praise for its evocative, image-rich storytelling and cinematic Mafia obsession (on some tracks, he adopted the guise of gangster Lex Diamonds). Also notable was Raekwon's crackling chemistry with heavily featured collaborator Ghostface Killah, who enjoyed something of a coming-out party with all the exposure (he hadn't been nearly as much of a presence on Enter the Wu-Tang). Raekwon returned to the Wu-Tang fold for the group's 1997 sophomore effort, Wu-Tang Forever. Raekwon's Immobilarity was released in late 1999. This time around, neither RZA nor Ghostface Killah contributed to the album at all and perhaps as a result, reviews were more mixed. Raekwon recorded with Wu on their subsequent albums The W (2000) and Iron Flag (2001). In 2003, he dropped The Lex Diamond Story. Since that release, he has released a handful of mixtapes including Heroin Only, R.A.G.U. (Rae and Ghost United) and The Vatican Mixtape series.