Raekwon's got a lot cooking

Wouldn't you love to see Raekwon have his own Food Network show?

Don't act like it hasn't crossed your mind! The Wu-Tang Clan member, best known as "The Chef," on the same network that gave us Rachael Ray and Emeril Lagasse. Perhaps even flirting and swapping recipes with Giada De Laurentiis or Paula Deen.

Even if you haven't thought about it, Raekwon has.

"I mean, I definitely had a couple of my agents definitely go in that direction, and we're definitely exploring that situation," Raekwon says on the phone from his Atlanta residence. "If I do ever get a show at that capacity, you can bet it won't be no pretty dishes. It'll be more or less hungry-man dishes, youknowhaimean?"

Raekwon (who also goes by Corey Woods), says he got his culinary skills from his moms, and would even like to go the entrepeneurial route, like George Foreman. "I wanna do my own, like, steamer grill, you know," he says. "Rae's on some Martha Stewart [expletive], too."

With everything the 39-year-old New Yorker went through to get his fourth, latest effort, "Only Built for Cuban Linx ... Pt. II," out on the streets, conquering the foodie market sounds more like an ambitious challenge than mere silly talk. The second "Linx" has been a long-awaited follow-up to Raekwon's 1995 debut, considered one of the best hip-hop albums of the '90s and a groundbreaker in the mafioso rap genre. Released during a time that also gave us The Notorious B.I.G's "Ready to Die," Jay Z's "Reasonable Doubt" and Nas's "Illmatic," "Linx" was an indication that East Coast hip-hop was still coming correct during the dominant era of West Coast gangsta rap.

Even though the album has been hailed as an influential classic, Raekwon always thought he could've come a little better.

"I wanted to outdo the first one, but not really outdo it, youknowhaimean," he says. "My thing is, I wanna always be creative and move forward in my career as far as making music. But, at the same token, this one was definitely a throwback album to the first one. ... And, even though this album was a great album to everybody, I still felt like, as an individual, I could've brung more to the table."

Raekwon rounded up the usual suspects from "Linx": collaborator and "guest star" Ghostface Killah, producer RZA, and other members of the Clan (aka the Wu-Gambinos). But while RZA produced several tracks on this album, Rae says his mind was on other things.

"I respect RZA as a powerful producer, youknowhaimean," he says. "But, at the end of the day, I think I was forced to go to the next direction and utilize other things. Because, it was like, you know, I wasn't really fond of what he'd been making in the last couple of years. ... And it's hard to make another man focus when he has so many different things in his own life that he has to do."

The same goes for Dr. Dre, who also worked on "Linx." There was even talk that Rae would join Dre's Aftermath Entertainment empire. But that fell by the wayside.

"Immediately, he wanted to have me aboard on his ball club," he says. "But, at the same token, he's a man that wears many hats as well. And, you know, he had a lot of obligational things he had to deal with. And I guess that, overall, it kinda, like, put my situation on the back burner."

Eventually, after several delays, the album would contain not only tracks produced by RZA and Dre, but production work from Erick Sermon, Marley Marl, Pete Rock and The Alchemist. Raekwon even managed to snag some beats from the late J Dilla before he passed away in 2006. You can thank Busta Rhymes, co-executive producer on the album, for that.

"He had a great rapport with J Dilla," he says, "and, at the end of the day, he introduced me to J Dilla's style of music. And I was very much impressed. ... And J Dilla got on the phone and co-signed it."

When it was finally released in September, the album debuted at No. 4 on The Billboard 200, selling about 68,000 copies in its first week. It was also ranked the most downloaded album available on iTunes in its first week of release. This is not bad for an independent release. Says Rae, "Now, I made more money on this album than I ever made on any one of my albums that I put out."