HIP HOP CLASSICS: Eric B. & Rakim - Paid in Full Album

It’s the time of the week again. Time to discuss and listen to some classic hip hop and hopefully find an album or artist a new fan or two. This week, we’re back in the 80s and we’re discussing an album from a producer and MC duo that, along with Big Daddy Kane, shaped a lot of the hip hop that became popular in the early 90s and beyond. We’re talking about Eric B. & Rakim’s Paid in Full...

Yet another album that sounds both of its time yet forward thinking at the same time. There wasn’t many out there that could challenge Rakim on the mic at the time and his rivalry with the before mentioned Big Daddy Kane put a lot more emphasis on rhyme skill and challenged many to keep up.

@Henry to pin

Previous classic threads:

HIP HOP CLASSICS: Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back • forum.chorus.fm
HIP HOP CLASSICS: Fugees - The Score • forum.chorus.fm
HIP HOP CLASSICS: OutKast - Stankonia • forum.chorus.fm
HIP HOP CLASSICS: Boogie Down Productions - Criminal Minded • forum.chorus.fm
HIP HOP CLASSICS: A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory • forum.chorus.fm
HIP HOP CLASSICS: Madvillain - Madvillainy • forum.chorus.fm

 

Just started listening to this last month. Some excellent beats/scratching on this.

 

Excited to dive into this.

 

Feel like I never see this album talked about much even among others of its era, but it’s such a trip

 

The title track is just about perfect.

 

This is on constant rotation in my office. Some of my younger clients have been into it.

 

Can't look back now, tomorrow's never promised B
Where I'm from, for president we voted Eric B ~Fat Joe

Paid In Full is one of the first rap albums I owned. It's one of the 80s rap albums that still absolutely holds up to this day. I Ain't No Joke and I Know You Got Soul are still some of the best rap tracks ever made, if you ask me.

 

Such a good album. I revisited it recently actually because the song Paid in Full was in the most recent season of Ozark. Reminded me I hadn't spun this in ages.

 

There's not many classic albums where you can say that half of the songs off it are bona fide classics of the genre. Most classics will have 2 or 3 stand out tracks and a lot of other very good songs round them. This feels different.

This also feels a lot more special and influential than a lot of others we've talked about and I can't put my finger on why.

 

Because it's one of handful of albums that aren't just classics but specifically reinvented rapping and changed it into what it more or less still is today

 

I remember putting this on for the first time probably around 2008/9 and being shocked at how many beats/rhymes are sampled throughout hip hop. Love this tape.

 

hell yeah. i remember this being a big one for me in the dorms but i haven't, unfortunately, spun it much since

 

The extended cut of paid in full where they sample John Mellancamp over the drums was so dope the first time I heard it.

 

Back in the glory days, where all rap was just about how good you were at rapping

 

Imagine being literally any other rapper at that time, doing almost exclusively AABB rhymes, and then this comes out and you just fall into a deep depression

 

Updated the OP with all the previous classics threads. Will be including them in all future classic threads.

 

Theirs something utterly depressing about seeing a thread for an all time classic hip hop album that changed so much and that only has 16 posts, yet a thread for a bland indie pop record by a singer with a good PR team has over 1000 posts in under a day.

Ah well.

 

Don’t take it personally. This album ain’t no joke, maybe it just didn’t move the crowd. As these threads continue and the rhyme goes on, maybe this will become more of their melody. People will recognize when Eric b is on the cut you know it’s got soul.

 

it’s been a busy week so i didn’t have a ton of time to do a write up like other classics we’ve done but, yeah, this was fantastic lol

 

The scratches on this give my car a workout

 

After spending a month with this I adore Chinese Arithmetic

 

There's not enough scratching in hip hop these days.