The first word of this story is Rakim. In the summer of 1987, a young man named Eric B. and his partner Rakim walked into a studio in Manhattan with a plan to change the sound of music forever, yet they had no idea how much their work would be scrutinized decades later. They recorded their debut album, Paid in Full, in just one week, working in 48-hour shifts to stay within a tight budget. The result was an album that would eventually sell over a million copies and be certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1995, but at the time of its release on the 7th of July 1987, it was just another entry in a crowded field of hip-hop records. The duo had met in 1985 when Eric B. was looking for a rapper to complement his turntable work at the New York City radio station WBLS. Rakim responded to the search for New York's top MC, and the two began a partnership that would redefine the genre. They recorded the album at hip-hop producer Marley Marl's home studio and Power Play Studios, using a method that Rakim later described as reading his lyrics from a paper while listening to the beat. In 2006, Rakim revealed that when he heard his first album today, he heard himself reading his rhymes, but he was his worst critic. The album was completed in a single week, with the duo working in 48-hour shifts and recording in single takes to finish the project within budget. Eric B. later stated that to say they put together a calculated album to be a great album would be a lie, as they were just doing records that felt good. The album cover featured a photo of Eric B. and Rakim wearing custom-made Gucci knock-ups by Harlem tailor Dapper Dan, a visual statement that would become iconic in the history of hip-hop fashion.
The Architect of Flow
Rakim's rapping deviated from the simple rhyme patterns of early 1980s hip-hop, introducing a free-rhythm style that ignored bar lines and earned comparisons to the jazz legend Thelonious Monk. The New York Times Ben Ratliff wrote that Rakim's unblustery rapping developed the form beyond the flat-footed rhythms of schoolyard rhymes. While many rappers developed their technique through improvisation, Rakim was one of the first to demonstrate the advantages of a writerly style, as with his pioneering use of internal rhyme. Unlike previous rappers such as LL Cool J and Run-DMC who delivered their vocals with high energy, Rakim employed a relaxed, stoic delivery. According to MTV, they had been used to MCs like Run and DMC, Chuck D and KRS-One leaping on the mic shouting with energy and irreverence, but Rakim took a methodical approach to his microphone fiending. He had a slow flow, and every line was blunt, mesmeric. Rakim's relaxed delivery resulted from his jazz influences; he had played the saxophone and was a John Coltrane fan. His subject matter often covered his own rapping skills and lyrical superiority over other rappers. AllMusic editor Steve Huey characterized Rakim for his complex internal rhymes, literate imagery, velvet-smooth flow, and unpredictable, off-the-beat rhythms. Pitchfork writer Jess Harvell described his rapping as authoritative, burnished, and possessing an unflappable sense of rhythm. The album marked the beginning of heavy sampling in hip-hop records, with Eric B. reinstating the art of live turntable mixing. His soul-filled sampling became influential in future hip-hop production. Music critic Robert Christgau noted that Eric B. had incorporated touches of horn or whistle deep in the mix of his sampled percussion and scratches. The album contains ten tracks, three of which are instrumentals, showcasing the duo's ability to blend music and poetry in a way that had never been done before.
The first single, Eric B. Is President, was released with My Melody as the B-side, and it sparked a debate on the legality of unauthorized sampling when James Brown sued to prevent the duo's use of his music. The track peaked at number 48 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks and number forty on the Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales. PopMatters Mark Anthony Neal called it the most danceable hip-hop recording of 1986. According to Touré of The New York Times, it is Rakim's verbal dexterity as well as his calm, deep voice and dark tone that has made this song a rap classic. Remixes of both Eric B. Is President and My Melody were included on the album as opposed to their original versions. The second single, I Know You Got Soul, peaked at number 39 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart, number 34 on the Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales, and number 64 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks. The track's production contains digitized cymbal crashes, breathing sounds, and a bumping bass line. The song popularized James Brown samples in hip-hop songs, and the British band M|A|R|R|S sampled the line, Pump up the volume, on their number one UK single, Pump Up the Volume. Rolling Stone ranked it at number 386 on The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The third single, I Ain't No Joke, peaked at number 38 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks. Described as one of the album's monumental singles, Michael Di Bella wrote in the All Music Guide to Rock that Rakim grabs the listener by the throat and illustrates his mastery of the rhyming craft. The fourth single, Move the Crowd, peaked at number three on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart and number 25 on the Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales. The track's B-side, Paid in Full, was released as a single in 1987 and later remixed by the production duo Coldcut. The remix used several vocal samples, most prominently Im Nin'alu by Israeli singer Ofra Haza. In 2008, the song was ranked at number 24 on VH1's 100 Greatest Hip Hop Songs. The legal battles and the sampling techniques used in these singles would become a defining feature of the album's legacy, setting a precedent for future hip-hop production.
The Critics and The Crowd
In a contemporary review for The Washington Post, Mark Jenkins highlighted the single Eric B. Is President but was unimpressed by the rest of Paid in Full, stating that its beats are monotonous and the attempts to take jazz and the quiet storm and convert into hip-hop form fall flat. Robert Christgau gave the album a B grade in his Consumer Guide column for The Village Voice. Writing in 2001, he said it has four groundbreaking masterworks in I Ain't No Joke, I Know You Got Soul, Paid in Full, and Eric B. Is President, but was less enthusiastic about the other six songs, calling them pure, innovative, in-your-face but also turntablism with spoken decoration, of small use to anyone who hasn't internalized the real hip hop aesthetic. In the newspaper's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll, it was named the 27th best album of 1987. Paid in Full was released during what became known as the golden age hip-hop era. In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Sasha Frere-Jones called it one of hip-hop's perfect records, while Alex Ogg considered it to be the duo's magnum opus in his book The Men Behind Def Jam. Rakim's rapping on the album set a blueprint for future rappers and helped secure East Coast hip-hop's reputation for innovative lyrical technique. Author William Cobb stated in To the Break of Dawn that his rapping had stepped outside of the preceding era of old school hip-hop and that while the vocabulary and lyrical dexterity of newer rappers had improved, it was nowhere near what Rakim introduced to the genre. The New York Times Dimitri Ehrlich, who described the album as an artistic and commercial benchmark, credited Rakim for helping give birth to a musical genre and leading a quiet musical revolution, introducing a soft-spoken rapping style. AllMusic's Steve Huey declared Paid in Full one of hip-hop's most influential albums and essential listening for those interested in the genre's basic musical foundations. MTV ranked it at number one in The Greatest Hip-Hop Albums of All Time, stating it raised the standards of hip-hop both sonically and poetically and described it as captivating, profound, innovative and instantly influential. The album is broken down track-by-track by Rakim in Brian Coleman's book Check the Technique, a testament to its enduring influence on the genre.
The Legacy of the Record
In 2003, Rolling Stone listed Paid in Full at number 228 on The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list, calling it Ice-grilled, laid-back, diamond-sharp: Rakim is a front-runner in the race for Best Rapper Ever, and this album is a big reason why. In the 2020 reboot of the list, the album's rank shot up to number 61. Similarly, Blender magazine included the album in its 500 CDs You Must Own Before Die. Time magazine listed it as one of the eighteen albums of the 1980s in its All-TIME 100 albums; editor Alan Light acknowledged the record changed the sound, flow, and potential of hip-hop and that if Rakim is the greatest MC of all time, as many argue, this album is the evidence. Jess Harvell of Pitchfork complimented Rakim for an endless display of pure skill and described the album as laidback and funky, but believed it contained too much filler to get a free classic pass. Pitchfork placed Paid in Full at number fifty-two in its Top 100 Albums of the 1980s; editor Sam Chennault wrote that Rakim inspired a generation of MCs and defined what it meant to be a hip-hop lyricist. By 2018, at which point Pitchfork had substantially altered their list of the top albums of the 1980s, Paid in Full was moved to number eleven and called a crowning achievement of hip-hop's first golden age and one of the genre's glittering Rosetta Stones. Slant Magazine listed the album at #32 on its list of Best Albums of the 1980s saying For his part, Rakim didn't need to rely on macho jargon and trite gangsterisms for his self-aggrandizing sermons; he would simply reel off line after line of spellbinding wordplay, influencing an entire decade of tongue-twisting MCs in the process. Rakim is credited with influencing rappers including the Wu-Tang Clan, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and Nas, who cited Paid in Full as one of his favorite albums. 50 Cent told NME that Paid in Full was the first album he bought, stating I used to get my grandmother's tape recorder , the one she used to tape church services , and record hip-hop off the radio. And, with Eric B. & Rakim, I think that was the first moment where I felt like, I've got to own this. This is crucial. It was a record that caused trouble, remarked Busta Rhymes, but it was one you couldn't top. Eminem borrows or interpolates lines from Paid in Full on tracks from The Marshall Mathers LP including My Melody (I'm Back) and As The Rhyme Goes On (The Way I Am). On the 11th of July 1995, the Recording Industry Association of America certified the album platinum, and as of December 1997, it had sold over a million copies.
The Unpaid Debt
The album's success led to a contract with Uni Records and MCA Records, where they released their second album, Follow the Leader in 1988. Eric B. and Rakim are credited as officially producing Paid in Full. Although Marley Marl claimed to have produced two tracks, My Melody and Eric B. Is President, Eric B. has argued that Marley Marl was only an engineer. In 2003, Eric B. alleged the duo had not been paid in full for their work, and filed a lawsuit against the Island Def Jam Music Group, Lyor Cohen, and Russell Simmons. The legal battle over the album's production credits and financial compensation became a significant part of the duo's history, highlighting the often contentious relationship between artists and record labels in the hip-hop industry. The album cover featured a photo of Eric B. and Rakim wearing custom-made Gucci knock-ups by Harlem tailor Dapper Dan, a visual statement that would become iconic in the history of hip-hop fashion. The album was released on the 7th of July 1987, by Island-subsidiary label 4th & B'way Records. The duo recorded the album at hip-hop producer Marley Marl's home studio and Power Play Studios in New York City, following Rakim's response to Eric B.'s search for a rapper to complement his disc jockey work in 1985. The album peaked at No. 58 on the Billboard 200 chart, No. 8 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and produced five singles: Eric B. Is President, I Ain't No Joke, I Know You Got Soul, Move the Crowd, and Paid in Full. The album's success led to a contract with Uni Records and MCA Records, where they released their second album, Follow the Leader in 1988. The legal battle over the album's production credits and financial compensation became a significant part of the duo's history, highlighting the often contentious relationship between artists and record labels in the hip-hop industry.