ERIC B AND RAKIM

Years ago I remember spotting the cover to this album in a record shop and gleefully ridiculing it with the friend I was with. Little did I know that such an admittedly silly pose is the front to an album of immense importance and genre-defining magnitude. Hip hop really exploded in the mid- to late-eighties and most historians and critics tend to agree this was the album that ushered in all the others. Although hip-hop, particularly in the nineties, went on to become an expansive, diverse and experimental force this album captures the genre in its purest form. The combination could barely be any more minimalist, with New York based DJ Eric B hooking up with MC Rakim, but the sheer talent of the two individuals ensures they came up with a collection of songs that puts most hip hop 'collectives' to shame. Eric B's DJ style is highly reductive, with the slimmest of samples inserted over the trebly break-beat, but this only seeks to brilliantly highlight the skills of his partner, whose highly verbose and ingenious wordplay is widely credited as being the most influential in the history of hip hop. Like many New York rappers, as opposed to the L.A. supergroups that followed, Rakim's style is deceptively monotonal but with a subtlety and creativity that makes his flat tone far more powerful than the over-excited aggitation of many gangsta rappers. What makes this debut so impressive and influential, though, is the lyrical webs he weaves with his use of metaphor, in particular, being imitated and just plain ripped off forever after. It is testament to his effortless ability that he can rap for seven minutes with only the sparsest of beats for company on "My Melody" and still keep the listener hooked. Eric B would not want his contribution to be overlooked, though, and so breaks Rakim's stream of lyrics up with two instrumental DJ showcases, "Eric B Is on the Cut" and "Chinese Arithmetic". I am admittedly not much of an expert on DJ techniques but it must be testament to his ability that neither four minute track tries the patience or has one's finger making its way to the skip button. Of course, the finest moments are when the two combine on the same track to produce some of the purest and finest hip hop songs ever. "I Ain't No Joke" opens the album with an instant torrent of mesmerising wordplay and cold beats whilst "Move the Crowd" benefits from the fullest sample of the set, with its classic funk providing the ideal backdrop for Rakim's verbose assaults. The two undisputed classics on the album appear in the form of the relentless "I Know You Got Soul", an unforgiving rush of sparse, muted funk and impossibly cool vocals, and the economical title track. On such an utterly seminal album both tracks provide the key to the experience, with the slick lyrics showing Rakim at his peak ('it ain't where you're from, it's where you're at') and the tracks as a whole providing the genre with a decade's worth of samples; Rakim's insistence to 'pump up the volume' formed the basis of a notoriously popular dance tune of that name, whilst the laconic funky beat of "Paid in Full" is the blueprint that nearly every hip hop artist has turned to at some time or another. The album plays out with "Eric B Is President", a six minute collage of Eric B's abrasive scratching and Rakim's forceful vocals, which was the very first track they cut together back in '86 and, whilst still impressive, shows both the uniqueness of their approach and the extent to which they developed it in a short space of time. In any event, it marks the end to an astonishingly consistent and impressive set of material. In this age of saturated markets and image over content it is immensely satisfying to listen to such an unpretentious showcase of authentic and unique talent. This is hip hop in such a raw, pure, and undiluted form that everything that came after is merely a compound substance, taken from this basic element.

The pleasure of hearing a band or artist at the forefront of their genre perform at their very peak is one that is, by its very nature, severely limited and, as a result, uniquely fulfilling. Eric B and Rakim ripped up the rule book on Paid in Full and established hip-hop and, particularly, MCing as an infinitely more sophisticated science. Old school hip-hop was obliterated in a single stroke as the reigning kings, Run DMC in particular, had their crowns unceremoniously snatched from them as their supposed rapping was exposed as little more than leaden, lumbering shouting. This, of course, opened the doors for the real commercial giants of the genre, in the form of the nascent Public Enemy and NWA, but any pretensions they might have had about jumping to the front of the queue were dashed by what came next with the flex of the wrist. It seems to be a fact that is in little need of verification that Eric B and Rakim were both the pioneers of their respective arts. Rakim may be the greatest MC to ever lay his rhymes to tape but it is the explosion of sophistication from Eric B that really sets this album apart and exhorts the newly born upstarts to follow their lead. Instead of the sparse funk of their debut Eric B creates an explosion of sound through a furious, bass-heavy blitzkrieg of DJing. Admittedly he is not the first DJ to incorporate live instruments but the proficiency of his musician Steve Blass Griffin ensures Rakim's accompaniment goes beyond mere breakbeats. Furthermore, Eric B's sampling is taken up a gear with him eschewing the James Brown bass lines and instead contrasting the thunderous bass with tacky eighties synths ripped from hip-hop's infancy. Again, there are DJ solo spots and, again, I do not feel adequately qualified to critique them but they do serve to give Rakim a chance to catch his breath and to increase the excitement when he kicks off again with the effortless cool of "Put Your Hands Together" (with the wonderfully incongruous introduction of a minute of classical piano). And, of course, amidst all this fuss about Eric B's peerless technique one simply cannot overlook Rakim's lyrical and technical genius. MCing might have become infinitely more superior after his entrance but no-one ever surpassed it. As with before, the lyrical content rarely, if ever, ventures beyond Rakim's acknowledgment of his own genius but, again, one of the most exhilarating pleasures within music is when the person banging on about being the greatest really is the best. The album instantly explodes from the speakers with the pace-setting title track, that is an unbelievable thunderous charge of Rakim's verbose fluency and an immediate showcase of Eric B's breath-taking ability. Any doubts that they would find it hard to match the impact of Paid in Full are dispelled in a whirlwind of genre-defining bravado. The first three tracks are enough in themselves for the duo to emphatically make their point with the classic "Microphone Fiend" providing a relentlessly funky breakbeat for Rakim's famous account of his MC addiction (although I am still unsure whether the hilarity of the line 'after 12 I'm like a gremlin/feed me hip-hop and I start trembling' is intentional or not) and the self-descriptive "Lyrics of Fury", a search-and-destroy assault on hip-hop's dynamics, which must have had Chuck D and Terminator X creaming themselves with delight, as much of Public Enemy's best material derives from that track. But Eric and Rakim are not just one-paced ponies (albeit an incredibly fast pace) as two of the finest moments on the second half come with the laidback cool of "Put Your Hands Together" and Rakim's anthem "The R". The first verse of the former, if not the greatest, is certainly the coolest moment in Rakim's career ('I don't even have to say my name 'cause when the place is ripped in half, I'm to blame'). As a whole, it is tedious to keep on repeating the same point but this album is simply the most impressive and confident showcase of hip-hop I have ever heard. Where Paid in Full, despite its raw genius, still sounded like a product of its time this follow-up album is simply timeless. It could be compared to any release during hip-hop's golden era and it would still put it to shame. Eric B and Rakim were the best, they knew it, and the resulting album is a work of art that is brimming with such self-acknowledged greatness that its pleasures are almost pornographic.

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Email me at: jackfeeny@yahoo.co.uk