November 20, 2003
All Praise Is Due
While we're all so busy digging up 15 year old tapes, might as well take a fresh look at "Paid In Full":
. . . AND BLESS THE MIC FOR THE GODS: RAKIM ALLAH
In this journey, you're the journal, I'm the journalist / Am I eternal, or an eternalist?
— Rakim Allah, "Follow the Leader"
That's from Rakim's "Follow the Leader", though it could be Roland Barthes convincing us that authors are the creations of texts and that texts are the recreation of closed cultures and close readers . . . the crisis thrown up in Rakim's rhyme-the poet pondering whether he's a modernist or a postmodernist, a creative God or a revised body of texts-is rendered moot in the next line: "I'm about to flow, long as I can possibly go / Keep ya movin' 'cause the crowd said so. Dance!" Here Rakim locates his immortality in African culture's call-and-response continuum.
— Greg Tate, "Diary of a Bug", The Village Voice (1988)
When Greg Tate published his groundbreaking essay "Diary of a Bug" in 1988 it was an event -- 17 fragments, a literary mix-tape from the seminal Afro-Pomo-Boho of his generation -- the birth of Black Popular Post-Structuralism. And when he finished name-dropping the sources of his inspiration -- F. Scott Fitzgerald and Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante -- and finally got down to critical business at hand, the first "text" he took up was none other than Rakim Allah, the Poet Laureate of the Hip-Hop Nation. Indeed there's never been a hip-hop artist (with apologies to my man Mike Dyson and his muse Tupac Shakur) who deserved top-shelf scholarly love from the camp of the Blackademe Niggeratti more than Rakim.
Four lines from the b-side of that first 12-inch single -- "I take seven MCs put 'em in a line / And add seven more brothers who think they can rhyme / Well It'll take seven more before I go for mine / And that's 21 MCs ate up at the same time" -- and the lyrical gauntlet was forever thrown down, forever reified, as every up-and-coming ghetto wordsmith (Big Daddy Kane, Nas, Rass Kass, Treach, Canibus) is introduced as "the next . . ." and 17 years later we can only say "still . . ." The recently released Paid in Full: Deluxe Edition captures those initial lyrical moments, in the career of hip-hop's greatest MC...
Posted by jsmooth995 at November 20, 2003 12:41 AM
This article is sooo waiting for me to slam it.
I'll be back.
Posted by: eric at November 20, 2003 03:59 AM
Jay- The 7 Mc verse, according to Biz Mark, was written 3 years before he recorded it. If this is true then he was about 14 years old. You're on the inside, Jay, can you verify this?
Posted by: pexdiggy at November 20, 2003 08:29 AM
pexdiggy...i also read that rakim had most of the rhymes on that album written years before and he had recorded them on a tape.....eric b. heard the tape and convinced him to do an album. in his article over at thaformula.com ra said he wrote those rhymes in ninth or tenth grade or something...damn.
where are the prodigies in hip hop today?
"they say my ghetto instrumental / detrimental to kids / as if they can't see the misery / in which they live" - 2pac
Posted by: hardCore at November 20, 2003 11:11 AM
which goes to say he's on another level not many people are on or even see.....
Posted by: pexdiggy at November 20, 2003 07:49 PM
Oh my, it's been 15 years. I'm so old.
Posted by: muzer at November 21, 2003 09:12 PM
I just wanted to send a big Fuck You over to eric. I thought you were gonna be back dickface.
I guess you forgot the bullshit comment you had in mind. Ra is the best ever - no doubt in my mind. You fourth generation hip hoppin clones need to do your homework. Peep it:
"...I can take a phrase that's rarely heard/ flip it/ now it's a daily word."
SICK.
Posted by: mic at November 28, 2003 05:38 PM
Posted by: pexdiggy at November 28, 2003 08:28 PM
Half the people on this website say Jay-Z is the best. Others say Rakim. A few say Nas or KRS, maybe even Chuck D.
I, don't care who is best.
And I don't think we -- meaning you and me -- have much potential as friends.
Good bye.
Posted by: eric at November 29, 2003 04:48 AM
Oh, and if anyone knows where to sign up for the "Blackademe Niggeratti", let me know. I'll use Affirmative Action to get in on that.
Posted by: eric at November 29, 2003 04:54 AM
Eric, you're breaking my heart.
Pex, I'm not sure if you were trying to be funny or what...but I want everyone to a) go listen to Follow The Leader b) break down the lyrics (never mind the flow) c) think about how much is put into each singular sentence (nothing is there for the sake of rhyming two words) d) think about how this was 1988 and how fifteen years later, you can still find social/cultural relevance and depth in these *words*.
Posted by: mic at November 29, 2003 10:49 PM
There's another (I'm assuming more modern) rap song I heard that has the line "In this journey I'm the journal, you're the journalist, am I eternal or an eternalist?" I don't know who does it though. Does anyone know?
Posted by: Colin at January 11, 2004 11:54 PM
Posted by: eric at January 12, 2004 12:06 AM
Dude, Rakim is the ultimate. He said:
Critics and biters still don't know where my source of light is
I still live authors and writers with arthritis.
Are you kidding? Hands down, all praise is due to Rakim.
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