Album dossier / 1987

Paid in Full

Eric B. & Rakim · Hip-Hop

Eric B. and 18-year-old Long Island rapper Rakim met in 1985 through a search for 'New York's top MC,' cutting their debut single 'Eric B. Is President' at DJ/producer Marley Marl's home studio in Chestnut Ridge before finishing the album at Manhattan's Power Play Studios. Rakim wrote each verse in roughly an hour while listening to the beat, then read his lyrics from paper straight into the booth; the duo worked in marathon 48-hour shifts and completed the whole record in about a week to stay within budget. The title track and 'I Know You Got Soul' built their grooves around the much-sampled 'Ashley's Roachclip' break and James Brown/Bobby Byrd source material, helping popularize James Brown sampling across hip-hop, while Rakim's intricate internal rhyme schemes -- 'I start to think and then I sink / Into the paper like I was ink' -- reset the bar for MC technique; MTV later named Paid in Full the greatest hip-hop album of all time.