Short answers, pulled from the story.
Paid in Full was released on the 7th of July, 1987, on 4th & B'way Records, a subsidiary of Island Records. The album was recorded in approximately one week at Marley Marl's home studio and Power Play Studios in New York City.
Paid in Full sold over a million copies. The Recording Industry Association of America certified it platinum on the 11th of July, 1995, and sales had surpassed one million copies as of December 1997.
Rakim pioneered the use of internal rhymes in hip-hop, embedding rhymes within lines rather than only at their ends. His relaxed, stoic delivery contrasted sharply with the high-energy style of contemporaries like Run-DMC and LL Cool J, and critics described his flow as influenced by jazz musicians including John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk.
Rolling Stone ranked Paid in Full at number 228 on its 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and maintained that position in a 2012 revision. In the 2020 edition of the list, the album's rank rose to number 61.
Rakim is credited with influencing the Wu-Tang Clan, Jay-Z, Nas, 50 Cent, and Eminem. Eminem interpolated lines from "My Melody" and "As The Rhyme Goes On" on The Marshall Mathers LP, and 50 Cent described Paid in Full as the first album he ever bought.
The title track "Paid in Full" was released as a single in 1987 and later remixed by the production duo Coldcut. The remix drew most prominently from "Im Nin'alu" by Israeli singer Ofra Haza. VH1 ranked the remixed version at number 24 on its list of the 100 greatest hip-hop songs in 2008.