Rapping with Rakim
The rapper comes to The Hat Factory.
Plenty of successful people in practically every field will be happy to tell you that their accomplishments are the results of a destiny fulfilled. For the rapper Rakim, it had to be difficult to guess which of those from his neighborhood might be bound for success in hip-hop music, especially when it seemed that everyone wanted a shot.
“Most of the block, everybody was trying to rhyme,” said Rakim, speaking from Charlotte, NC. “Just like today. They say 85 to 90% of the kids used to play ball; now it’s 85 to 90% of the kids rap. It was the same thing back in the day. The majority of the kids on the block was trying to rhyme.”
Rakim, widely considered to be one of the greatest rappers ever to stand before a mic, began working in 1986 as half of Eric B and Rakim. Over the next couple of years they launched to the forefront of hip hop with albums that stand as one of the genre’s finest one-two punches ever, 1987’s “Paid In Full” and ‘88’s “Follow The Leader.”
For Rakim, those early days gave him the opportunity to find his place in a nascent legacy that had excited him from the beginning. “Hearing Cold Crush 4, the Fantastic Five, and all these cats, Grandmaster Flash and Kook Moe Dee and the Treacherous Three. This was before most of them was doing records. It was so crazy, I had to be a part of it. I think my musical background just gave me that extra love for music, so I felt I could be a part of it.”
While many rappers these days are well aware of those who have shaped the genre over the past three decades, Rakim’s entry in its early days provided him with a sense of what gave root to hip hop.
“You gotta say artists like James Brown and Al Green, a lot of them artists,” said Rakim. “That’s what we listened to, and that’s what we were getting our feel from. Some of the tracks they was doing is what we were trying to emulate with the samples and all that. Artists like that is who kind of created the texture of some of the sound of hip hop, people like Stevie Wonder or Michael Jackson, Kool and the Gang.”
“I listened to a lot of jazz as well: John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker. And I decided to incorporate everything that I heard and everything that I knew into some of the styles and some of the things I was trying to bring across.”
Eric B and Rakim released two more albums before going their separate ways in 1992, and legal issues led to a five-year break before the release of Rakim’s first solo album, 1997’s “The 18th Letter,” and ‘97’s “The Master.” In 2000, Rakim was welcomed into Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment fold, but, with the gradual realization that a Rakim/Dre match-up might be a bit too much of a good thing, an anticipated album never saw fruition.
“I think, once we got in the studio, we realized how different we was from each other. We stuck it out for a while, but you can’t compromise night and day. It’s either light or it’s dark. I just told him I’d rather come back to New York and start all over, and he understood that. Just had to come back and do it ourselves the way I wanted to.”
“Some of the songs that me and Dre did, they leaked them out shortly after I came back to New York, so I just tried to go back to the drawing board and start it all over. At the same time, putting my label together, trying to get all that together, was time-consuming as well, but I think that was important for me at this time in my career.”
Fast-forward to the present. With this month’s release of “The Seventh Seal,” Rakim finally has an opportunity to present his first album of the decade, and he has taken full advantage of having that creative platform.
“I think the main thing I want to accomplish is awareness,” said Rakim. The meaning of the seventh seal. And, at the same time, I want them to understand why I metaphorically used the title for hip-hop. Just to bring that awareness as far as what’s going on in the world and what’s going on in hip-hop, and let them know we’ve got to bring about change.”
“What it means is, when the seventh seal is given, it’s a sign of the times. It means the end of the times. Some of the things that’s taking place in front of our face right now: the storms, the tsunamis, the hurricanes, all the crazy weather that we can’t explain. The diseases, which were the plagues back then. Swine flu and things of that nature, AIDS. From us being back at war. The state of mind the world’s in, and things of that nature. I want to use it metaphorically for hip-hop.”
In 2009, over twenty years since he emerged with some of hip hop’s finest tracks, Rakim is comfortable in the knowledge that his singular creative vision has remained intact, and that his faith in that vision has resulted in an album that serves as a true document for the times.
“Going left, that’s what I’m known to do. When everybody’s going this way I always try to find my own lane and stick to it. But being that there’s so much negativity in the game right now, I tried to make a positive album and give people that choice again.”
“One of the things I was trying to do was to make a classic album. Understanding my fan base, which is crazy now…it’s from the young hip-hopper to the oldest hip-hopper. I tried to incorporate all of that and speak to everybody at the same time.”
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