Essential Listening

I mentioned in my BDP blog ( if you havent caught the last couple click Essential Listening ) that I would discuss another legendary and game changing 1987 album.

This one was even more impactful on me than Criminal Minded and was the blueprint in many ways of what east coast Golden Era hiphop would become.

This groundbreaking album was Eric B & Rakim's Paid In Full.

In the mid 80's Eric B was a DJ on a New York radio show and decided to run a competition to find an emcee to work with that would compliment his beats.
Rakim - who was housemates with the legendary Marley Marl - decided to enter and ended up winning.
This was fortutious for the history of the game, as the pairing of these two  - and type of hiphop they made was to be the blueprint for Pete Rock & CL Smooth, Gangstarr, Nas and many more of the all time greats.

With Eric B's production on this album, he really set the tone for heavily sample based production. The album definitely has some classic beats especially noteworthy is the bassline for the title track.

But more so than Eric B's instrumentals, it was the rhyme styles of Rakim that made this album special, and put Rakim in the 'Greatest of All Time' category.

Previous to this, most of the outstanding rappers employed a hype, attack the mic at full volume, energetic rhyme style. KRS One, LL Cool J, Run DMC all fit the bill for this style and all of them typically had a 4/4 rhyme scheme with the last word of each bar rhyming.

Rakim, who was a jazz afficianado, came in on a completely different tagent. His rhyme style was calm and authorative, full of lyrical imagery.
He was the first to really flow around time and not stick to the basic 4/4, dragging rhyme schemes around beat and through bars, which earned his raps comparisons to jazz soloists rather than other MC's.

He was also the the pioneer of the 'internal rhyme scheme' where lines within bars would rhyme with those in the next, setting the precedent for the Nas' and Kool G Raps of the future.

This album, which also made popular the sampling of James Brown, was named by MTV as the Greatest Hiphop Album of all time, and rates in practically every major music publications all time lists.


I can't speak highly enough of the role Rakim has played and if you are not familiar with this album, do yourself a favour and go out and get it right now.