Sooooo….Rakim is coming to Vancouver (August 17th @ Pop Opera)…excuse me for a minute…
(HOLYSHITHOLYSHITHOLYSHIT!!!!!!! Where can I get tickets, Internet? ANSWER ME!! Clubzone, you say? Ok. Hi, Clubzone. I’d like to buy some tickets for RAKIM!!!! No, I didn’t mean to yell at…I’m not mad. I’m motherfuckin’ excited, Clubzone! ‘The R’ is going to be here soon in the damn flesh! Look, just gimme a ticket. I gotta tell these fools to come see you by clicking anywhere in these red letters so they can do 1980’s fistpumps for the next week until Rakim takes the stage alongside Defenders of the Faith, Kyprios, and DJ’s Hedspin, Flipout and Jay Swing. Thanks. See you on the 17th!)
…ahem. Where was I? Oh yeah. Rakim Allah, for those that don’t know, is one of, if not the, most universally respected Masters of Ceremony in the history of hip hop. In honour of his alias, The 18th Letter, I’m going to tell you why while counting down his best 18 songs according to me. Actually, honour has nothing to do with it. It was originally a Top 10, but you try narrowing his discography to 10. It can’t be done! Every song culled feels like you’re slapping a puppy in the face. Here we go…
18. The 18 Letter (Always And Forever)
Ra returns over this appropriately triumphant beat to save the day after a long absence, minus Eric B. but missing none of what has him eternally on people’s top ten lists. (#8 on mine, for the record.)
Rap espionage. The beat’ll leave you shaken and stirred while Rakim takes full advantage of the icy menace of his impossibly smooth voice. Someone should name a drink after this song.
Rakim makes an impossible request. How the hell can you not sweat a bassline this hot?
You’ll be hard pressed to go more than a handful of lines without finding a lyric sampled by another song. This song perfectly illustrates how much other rappers (and rap itself) owe to ‘The R.’ Actually, it goes beyond rap. Britain’s first House Music hit was built around a Rakim vocal from this song. Shit, he even owes himself! The infamous opening line is the hook/title of the next entry on this list…
The unused portion of the sampled line is “…I shouldn’t have left you/Without a strong rhyme to step to.” Apology accepted, Ra. Just don’t do it again, alright?
13. Remember That
So, it’s the end of the night. You’re one of the last ones standing. It was a perfect night. A good barbecue to end a good summer. Your friends are strewn about your back yard in varying states of consciousness. As you survey the chaos, you start to flashback to all of the crazy summers you’ve had with these goofy motherfuckers over the last decade or two. Before you stumble inside to ‘accidentally’ wake your girl up to put the cherry on top of this night, you’re gonna toast your crew and put that cup to your face till it’s empty. Good night. Bow. End scene.
Now take that, give it to Dino Delvaille and Rakim, and PRESTO! Track 5 on ‘The 18th Letter.’
“Eric B. is on the cut, no mistakes allowed / ‘Cause to me, MC means (see next song title)…”
11. Move The Crowd
Even on a hard ass cut like this, his voice didn’t stomp, so much as slither across the track. See, while most rappers felt the need to yell to convey aggression, Rakim knew it was infinitely more intimidating to lay back on the mic and calmly threaten you. That same quiet intensity is a quality I have, but in my case people refer to it as ‘brooding.’ [Editor's Note: They actually refer to it as 'sulking.'] Nuv’s Note: I actually refer to you as ‘dickface.’ Stay the hell outta my column, ‘editor.’
09. Mahogany
Funnily enough, all the qualities mentioned in the previous song, while used for scare tactics there, are equally effective for getting you chicks, as evidenced here. Fun fact: Miss Teen USSR once caught me and the beat for this song dryhumping and done kicked me out the house. Not-so-fun-fact: That ‘once’ she caught me was yesterday. Can I crash on your couch when this article’s done?
08. Guess Who’s Back
THE most epic beat of all-time back in ’97. I played this over and over. When I would put it on mixtapes, I would record it twice in a row, because I knew I would want to hear it again right after it was over. And the cadence of the chorus will live in your head forever. Kinda like the whole ‘me/your couch’ thing is gonna go down…
It’s an extremely bad idea to be behind the wheel when this song kicks in. The bass activates a weird impulse in your brain, which relays a message to your right foot that the gas pedal is an asshole and you should step down on it as hard as you can. They won’t even sell you this track if you have one of those wack driver’s licenses where you have to have a ‘N’ in your rear window and a ‘L’ branded on your forehead and shit.
06. Paid In Full
This track would be even higher on the list if it didn’t take the album version like 8000 years for Eric B. and Rakim to stop making small talk about their agents and shit and realize we’re here, just tapping our feet waiting for the rapping to start. At least by the time the video in the above link was released they’d replaced the chitchat with weird-ass sound bites. None of which matters as soon as Ra starts spitting, by the way.
05. The Punisher
04. Lyrics Of Fury
I’d like to dedicate this to the many microphones that have been, and will be, massacred in performances, past and future, of these two ridiculous, lyrical monstrosities. You were all too young to die. We will miss your shiny, mesh heads and slender bodies. (Everyone take a sip, then pour some out.) Rest In Peace.
03. I Ain’t No Joke
The drums in this song roll up to the drums in other songs at recess and take their lunch money and, just when they think it’s safe, roll up on them during summer vacation at the beach and kick sand in their faces.
02. Microphone Fiend
‘Cause I grab the mic and try to say ‘Yes, Y’all’ / They try to take it and say that I’m too small / Cool, ’cause I don’t get upset / I kick a hole in the speaker pull the plug then I jet.”
Rakim didn’t just spell out what he was trying to say like the MCs that preceded him. (You know – “To the guy in the red, say what I said! To the dudes in the blue, do what you want to!” and other such goofy gibberish.) No. He painted pictures with his words. Together with Big Daddy Kane, Rakim forever changed the way rappers rapped. As much as NaS is Slick Rick’s storytelling successor, he owes large parts of his style to Ra, and I would venture to say directly to those four lines I quoted above. Lyrically, this might be his best track, in my opinion, but not my favourite…
01. Know The Ledge
Come on! That bassline? The little vocal sample used as punctuation? The scratching? Rakim’s entrance – “Sip the juice – I got enough to go around…” The moment where you, looking at the title, remove ‘The’ and a whole other layer of clever reveals itself. There really was no other option. I also realized, while making this list, that my favourite song by most of the artists on the Juice soundtrack…is their track on the Juice soundtrack. (See: Uptown Anthem, ‘Nuff Respect, So You Wanna Be A Gangster.) “Read her my resume, she know already, cool / Just meet me after school…” Now that you know the resume, I’ll meet you at Pop Opera on the 17th, right? No? Well…
“I guess you didn’t know the ledge.”
– Nuv
[EDITOR'S NOTE: CLICK HERE TO READ NUV'S REVIEW OF THE SHOW]
Who…?
You wouldn’t know him. He came out in ‘86, when you were already 42 and yelling at us kids to “keep down that damned racket.”
I believe you cleverly put Mahogany on a cd mix early in our relationship in a (successful) effort to dryhump me. When I hear the track now, years later, I still wanna inhale you. This is the gift Rakim gave to me.
I bet you wish george bush was still president now