Eric B. & Rakim

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Eric B. & Rakim changed hip hop before most people knew their names. The pair formed on Long Island, New York, in 1986, and within a year they had released a debut album that AllMusic would later describe as the work of "the premier DJ/MC team in all of hip-hop" during rap's golden age. Tom Terrell of NPR went further, calling them "the most influential DJ/MC combo in contemporary pop music period." Those are enormous claims. What made this duo so singular? How did a Queens DJ and a Long Island teenager with a beer and a bass line sample become the standard by which all others were measured? And why did it end before most listeners were ready for it to?

• 2. The Fonda Rae Basement

  ›

  Eric Barrier, the man who would become Eric B., was born and raised in East Elmhurst, Queens. He played trumpet and drums through high school before turning to turntables. He landed a DJing slot at radio station WBLS in New York City, which included the station's promotional events around the city. Looking for a rapper to work with, he was pointed toward Freddie Foxxx by a Queens-based promoter named Alvin Toney. Foxxx was not home when they visited, so Toney offered a different name: William Griffin, who rapped under the name Rakim.

  Griffin had been writing rhymes as a teenager in Wyandanch and had taken the name Rakim after converting to The Nation of Gods and Earths. The partnership began in an unlikely place. Eric B. borrowed records from Rakim's brother, Stevie Blass Griffin, who worked at a plant pressing bootleg albums. He brought those records down to Rakim's basement, where Rakim was drinking a beer and relaxing. Eric B. put on Fonda Rae's "Over Like A Fat Rat" and announced it would be the bass line for their record. Rakim's response, as Eric B. later recalled it: he "spit the beer all over the wall and thought it was the funniest shit in the world." Eric B. told him the laughter would follow them all the way to the bank.

  From that moment, the two moved quickly. They came under the guidance of Marley Marl, and the story of who produced their first single, 1986's "Eric B. Is President," has been contested ever since. Eric B. later told AllHipHop that he brought the music himself and paid Marl to work the equipment as an engineer. He was categorical: "Marley got paid. That's why he's not a producer; that's why he is not getting publishing."

• 3. Paid in Full

  ›

  Paid in Full was recorded at Power Play Studios in New York and released in 1987 on 4th & B'way Records. The album's name carried a particular resonance: it was drawn in part from the Paid in Full posse, a notorious New York collective of gangsters and rappers that included the original 50 Cent, Killer Ben, Kool G Rap, and Freddie Foxxx. That group appeared on the album's back cover.

  The recording itself was made under pressure. Eric B. later admitted the album was rushed, describing a stretch of nearly forty-eight straight hours in the studio. Rakim confirmed this, saying he would write a rhyme in the studio, put the beat down, finish the song in about an hour, and go straight into the booth to read it off the paper. Marley Marl noted that his cousin MC Shan assisted as an engineer on some tracks, including "My Melody," though Eric B. disputed this.

  MTV named Paid in Full the greatest album in hip hop history, writing that its release "left a mushroom cloud over the hip-hop community." Where MCs like Run-DMC, Chuck D, and KRS-One brought high energy and irreverence, Rakim's approach was methodical and slow, every line blunt and mesmeric. Eric B., meanwhile, was selecting loops and samples soaked in soul in a way that would shape producers for years. The album climbed into the Top Ten on the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. The Recording Industry Association of America certified it platinum in 1995, and it has sold over a million copies. That commercial success made history of its own: the duo became the first rap act to sign a million-dollar record deal, entering a three-album agreement with MCA.

• 4. Rakim's Rapping Revolution

  ›

  Rakim's technical approach broke from everything that came before it. His free-rhythm style ignored bar lines, and The New York Times writer Ben Ratliff described his "unblustery rapping" as having pushed the form beyond the "flat-footed rhythms of schoolyard rhymes." Critics found themselves reaching for jazz comparisons: The New York Times likened his style to Thelonious Monk. That connection was not incidental. Rakim had played the saxophone and was a devoted fan of John Coltrane, and his relaxed, stoic delivery drew directly from jazz's model of cool authority.

  He was among the first rappers to build a technique through writing rather than improvisation, pioneering internal rhymes and multisyllabic rhyme schemes at a time when most MCs relied on simple end-rhyme patterns. AllMusic editor Steve Huey noted his "complex internal rhymes, compounding, literate imagery, velvet-smooth flow, and unpredictable, off-the-beat rhythms." Pitchfork writer Jess Harvell called his rapping "authoritative, burnished, and possessing an unflappable sense of rhythm."

  Eric B.'s contribution was equally distinctive on his side of the divide. As a disc jockey, he had reclaimed the art of live turntable mixing. Music critic Robert Christgau noted that Eric B. wove "touches of horn or whistle deep in the mix" of his sampled percussion and scratches. Paid in Full is credited as a turning point in the heavy use of sampling in hip hop; three of its ten tracks are instrumentals. The combination of Rakim's writerly precision and Eric B.'s soul-drenched production created a sound that was, as Rolling Stone's Mark Coleman later wrote of their third album, "as stark, complex and edgy as Rakim's stone-cold stare on the album cover."

• 5. Three More Albums, One Slow Fracture

  ›

  Follow the Leader arrived in 1988 and pushed the production in a new direction, away from the stark minimalism of Paid in Full. The title track and "Lyrics of Fury" drew some of the strongest praise of Rakim's career. In 2003, comedian Chris Rock called the rapping on "Lyrics of Fury" "lyrically, the best rapping anyone's ever done." Rock also included Follow the Leader at number 12 on Vibe magazine's list of the Top 25 Hip Hop Albums of All-Time. The album's single "Microphone Fiend" became a fixture on Yo MTV Raps, then the number-one rated show on MTV.

  In 1989, the duo joined Jody Watley on her single "Friends" from the album Larger Than Life. The track reached the Top Ten on the Billboard Hot 100 and stood as one of the earliest crossover moments between hip hop and dance pop. Collaborations, however, were not their habit. When KRS-One's Stop the Violence Movement assembled the charity single "Self-Destruction" in early 1990, Rakim was conspicuously absent. He later told HalftimeOnline.net that he believed they had approached Eric B. without passing the invitation along, and that the slight left him bitter. He also acknowledged a harder truth: he had avoided featured appearances partly because he did not want another artist's reputation to color his own.

  Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em came out in 1990 and sold over 700,000 copies, earning gold certification. It was one of the first albums to receive a five-mic rating from The Source. Don't Sweat the Technique followed in 1992, but by the time it was released the partnership was already unraveling. Both members had expressed interest in solo work during the recording sessions. Eric B. refused to sign the label's release contract out of fear that Rakim would leave him behind. The refusal triggered a legal dispute with MCA that eventually dissolved the duo entirely. Eric B. later clarified that the underlying conflict was over ownership of the masters, involving labels like Island, not a financial dispute between the two of them: "We split all the money from dime one," he said. "We split every dime 50/50."

• 6. After the Split

  ›

  Eric B. released a self-titled solo album in 1995 on the independent label 95th Street Recordings. Legal problems slowed Rakim's solo path considerably, but he released The 18th Letter in 1997. His second solo album, The Master, came out in 1999 to a cooler critical reception. By the time the millennium turned, Eric B. had largely moved out of music into other business interests. Rakim signed with Dr. Dre's Aftermath label in 2000, though the anticipated album never appeared.

  The catalog question resolved itself in 1999, when PolyGram, which owned Island Records and therefore Paid in Full, merged with Universal Music Group, an outgrowth of MCA. That consolidation put the entire Eric B. & Rakim catalog under one roof for the first time. Rakim kept working as a guest artist, appearing alongside Jay-Z on "The Watcher, Part 2," Truth Hurts on "Addictive," and Kanye West on "Classic," as well as collaborations with Nas and KRS-One. In November 2009, he released The Seventh Seal. The duo were announced as one of fifteen finalists for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in September 2011, and received a second nomination in 2024.

  On the 20th of October 2016, Eric B. announced on Twitter that he and Rakim had reunited after twenty-three years apart. Their first reunion concert was held at the Apollo Theater in New York City on the 7th of July 2017. The following year they announced a seventeen-date American tour.