The 500 - #228 - Paid In Full - Eric B. & Rakim

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #228
Album Title: Paid In Full
Artist: Eric B. & Rakim
Genre: Golden Age Hip Hop
Recorded: Three Marly Marl's Home Studio and Power Play Studios, New York. 

Released: July, 1987
My age at release: 21
How familiar was I with it before this week: A few songs

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #61, moving up 167 places since the 2012 list.
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Paid In Full (Coldcut Remix)

The term "The Golden Age" comes to us from Greek Mythology. Specifically, it is mentioned in a poem written by Hesiod (c. 750 - 650 B.C.E.) in a didactic almanac of sorts entitled Works And Days. It described the decline of a state of people through a series of ages -- Gold, Silver, Bronze, Heroic and Iron. It was written when, according to Hesiod, human existence in its final stage would be a time of toil and misery. He described the Iron period as a time when "might makes right" and evil men use lies to be thought good. Humans no longer feel shame when committing sin, children dishonour parents and war is the norm. Sound familiar?

Conversely, the "Golden Age" is the period when peace and harmony prevailed, food was plentiful and death came peacefully, late in a vigorous and rewarding life. The term has, over time, morphed somewhat. Not only is it used to describe a time, sometimes imagined, full of peace, prosperity and harmony, it is also correlated with a time when a specific art, skill or practise was at its zenith.

As a kid, when I'd hear about "The Golden Age" of something, I would get the feeling that I'd missed out. Adults in my world and on television talked about The Golden Age of …Hollywood, Comic Books, Television, Radio or Science Fiction, and I couldn't help but wonder "what would that have been like...to be there...to exist in the thick of that miraculous time?”

The Golden Age of Comics (1938 - 1956) was a period I found particularly fascinating as a kid.

However, I've since realized that "The Golden Age" is not something one understands "living through" until well after it has departed. It is a construct developed in retrospect. Indeed, I have lived through, and feverishly participated in, “The Golden Age of Arcade Video Games" (1976-1984) and didn't recognize it as such until reflecting on it nostalgically in the late ‘90s. Indeed, I invested thousands of dollars into the fad...a quarter at a time.

An assortment of classic arcade video games from that 
Golden Age.

I also lived through The Golden Age of Hip Hop (1986-1993) and, in contrast with my financial and emotional commitment to arcade games, I actively railed against it. Like many twenty-somethings, I brimmed with a caustic cocktail of ignorance, intolerance and bombast. A quarter century later, not only have I softened my attitude, I’ve become a fan of this era in music. It was an emotional evolution that has been supercharged by my journey through The 500 list.

However, during The Golden Age of Hip Hop, there were a few songs and artists that managed to crack my armour of intolerance. Eric B. & Rakim was one such group, and the title track from this week's record, Paid In Full, was a song I quietly enjoyed.

Interestingly, it was not the original version of the song that made its way around my  youthful auditory disdain. It was a remix released in October, 1987, by English electronic duo Coldcut, comprising Matt Black and Jonathan More. The seven-minute version was dubbed Paid In Full (Seven Minutes of Madness-The Coldcut Remix). The extended name is not surprising, as Tony Harrington detailed in his 1998 book, Invisible* Jukebox. The landmark remix "laid the groundwork for hip hop's entry into the mainstream" and became Eric B. & Rakim's breakout hit outside the United States.

Paid In Full was the debut record from DJ Eric B. (Eric Banner) and rapper Rakim (William Michael Griffin Jr.) who met in Long Island, New York, in 1985 and were soon composing. The first song they wrote together, Eric B. Is President, was recorded in the home studio of  DJ and producer Marley Marl (Marlon Lu'Ree Williams). In my October, 2023, post I discussed the impact that song had on the evolution of hip hop. The lyrics were clever and Rakim was the first successful artist to incorporate multi-syllabic rhymes that crossed the musical bar line.

The song Paid In Full, is also clever lyrically and musically. The narrative eschewed the typical hip hop structure of the time -- hyper machismo, boastful and often rife with obscenities and references to a criminal world. Instead, Rakim eschews that approach and instead exposes his vulnerability as a struggling artist who hopes that his penchant for rhyme and hard work will lead to "righteous" (his word) financial redemption. The song is shrewdly built around beats and musical motifs from three Funk and R&B sources:

Ashley's Roachclip by The Soul Searchers (1974)

Don't Look Any Further by Dennis Edwards (1984)

Change The Beat (French Female Version) by Beside (1982) 

The Coldcut remix contains a staggering 25 samples from other audio sources including the haunting Im Nin'Alu from Israeli singer Ofra Haza who has been dubbed "The Madonna of the East".

There are some tracks on the debut Eric B. & Rakim album that are a bit dated -- Extended Beat and Chinese Arithmetic have not aged well. However, as evidenced by my classroom students' reaction to it, the song Paid In Full, stands-up. When a much younger colleague heard me playing it one morning before school, she asked who it was.

"This is Eric B. & Rakim", I answered, "mid-eighties hip hop".

"I like it," she replied.

"Yea," I said, "It holds up".

Quietly I thought, "it should", it is, after all, from "The Golden Age of Hip Hop." I can't say I lived through it, but I was grumpily adjacent.