61. Eric B. and Rakim, "Paid in Full"

 

This is gonna be really embarrassing, but not only did I not know much about this album, I had never heard it before yesterday.  That's how disconnected from most hip-hop I was in the 80s and 90s.  This was released in 1987, two weeks before yesterday's abum, Appetite for Destruction.  I don't know if that means anything.

So first: I was reading up on this album, as I do, and learned that it was incredibly influential and groundbreaking for its time.  Which is great, because it sounds hella dated to me.  Now, this is like someone who only knows modern fiction reading Moby Dick or Jane Eyre and going "lol why do they talk like that, so dumb," I understand that, but I AM THAT PERSON.  My personal enjoyment of rap began roughly with De La Soul, who were on a completely different wavelength than these guys.  Now, of course, you can't have Jonathan Franzen or Ottessa Moshfegh without Herman Melville or Charlotte Brontë so it means if you want to know about Englsih literature you've gotta study the old guys and if you want to know about Dr. Dre or Jay-Z you have to listen to this.  So I appreciate that.

I did, in fact, study English literature and I did not really enjoy Moby Dick, to tell you the truth.  And I did not really enjoy this album that much.  For one thing, I was surprised that there were three (!) instrumentals, which I had previously thought was a thing that only guys like J Dilla or DJ Shadow did.  And one of the instrumentals, "Chinese Arithmetic," is kind of grating with its stereotyped Chinese plinking music samples.  

But I do admire Eric B.'s unquestionable skill with sampling and working the decks.  I love the horn sample in "I Ain't No Joke," and Rakim has a great flow over it.  That horn, though (from the JB's "Pass the Peas") stuck in my head the rest of the day.  "As the Rhyme Goes On" doesn't have the same hook but it's a pretty great combination of turntable skill, sample selection, and Rakim's rhymes.

This album has, of course, become a rich source of samples in its own right for later artists.  For example, the title track, "Paid in Full," has been sampled about 120 times, believe it or not, by Lil Wayne, Mos Def, Wu-Tang, and on and on and on.  If this isn't the Moby Dick of rap, maybe it's the Shakespeare, endlessly quoted from and repurposed and reinvented by each new generation.  

Is this album in my personal Top 100? No.