Rakim: The MC Who Redefined Rap’s Flow

The Birth of a New Flow

Rakim is often named as the greatest rapper of all time due to his lasting impact on lyrical techniques. Before The God MC hit the scene, rappers delivered their rhymes with a sing-song, elementary cadence. The Long Island-born MC revolutionized the culture by introducing a multi-syllabic rhyming structure that was more complex and poetic.^[2]

Jazz Influence and Rhyming Technique

Rakim transformed the “flow” of rapping with more intricate rhyme schemes, which have been compared to jazz saxophone improvisation.^[3]

“I ain’t played [the saxophone] in a couple of years, but I think that had a lot to do with my rhyme flow,” Rakim told Halftime Online.^[4]

“Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music, man. It’s like I learned how to find words inside of the beat. The syncopation and the pauses is all from knowing music, playing the saxophone, listening to John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk and the crazy shit they were doing. I just tried to incorporate that into my rhyme flow. That played a big part in my flow.”

Legacy and Influence

Rakim’s debut modernized the entire style of rapping, making the previous approach to wordplay seem simplistic and outdated.^[5]

“I would venture to say that Rakim is the most studied MC ever,” Kool Moe Dee expressed in The Concise Guide to Hip Hop.^[6] “Any MC that came after 1986 had to study Rakim just to know what to be able to do. As Michael Jordan is the basketball player’s basketball player, Rakim is the MCs MC.”

Grandmaster Flash also spoke about Ra’s lasting impact on rhyming.

“Rakim brought so much new thought and technique to the game when he rhymed. It was like he single-handedly reinvented the art form of being an MC. Rakim was doing for rapping what I had done for DJing; he saw the limits of what was out there and figured he could do more.”

Unlike most of his predecessors, he rhymed several times inside the bars of music, rather than using one simple rhyme near the end of each bar.

Street poet Nas recalls how groundbreaking Rakim’s bars were when he first heard him rhyme.

“I never heard a flow like his. I heard a lot of dudes flow. A lot of dudes screaming. You got a lot of dudes screaming on the mic, so when he came out with the total opposite of that, it made everybody freeze in a way. He was like an instrument, and like inside the music, like an added instrument. And then what he’s saying on top of that never been done before,” he told MTV News during a joint interview with Rakim himself.^[9]

The Eric B. Partnership and Its End

Throughout the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Rakim and longtime musical partner, Eric B. found success with an impressive output: Paid in Full (1987), Follow the Leader (1988), Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em (1990), and Don’t Sweat the Technique (1992).^[10]

“Everything was kind of organic, man, for me and Eric B. to do what we did,” Rakim said on What’s Good. “I was 17… I was so young it took me a while to figure out how I wanted to approach hip-hop and let the people know how I wanted to get down.”^[11]

Despite the duo’s legendary musical run, their partnership unraveled because of a business disagreement in 1992.^[12]

“I can’t beat around the bush, because it would sound stupid. We had three more albums left on the contract and Eric B. came up with an idea. He said… if he’d do a solo joint, I’d do a solo joint, then we get together and do the last joint. Then our contracts would be up, we could negotiate new contracts. Meanwhile, when he’d do the solo joint he’d take all the money for that, when I’d do my solo joint I take all the money for that, get back together new album, new deal. You know, it was money signs. Long story short, Eric B. did his, I signed off and when it was time for me to do mine, he didn’t want to sign off. So that caused a lot of problems.”^[13]

He continued: “That caused the breakup of Eric B. and Rakim. Again, man, it was business. He felt that if he would have signed for some reason I wasn’t going to sign back to the last album. He felt I was going to cut him out for some reason. That was the misunderstanding. I ain’t gonna front, man, bitter taste in my mouth for a long time. But like I said, I finally matured on that situation and realized it was bigger than us, so we here right now.”

Solo Career and Signing to Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Label

After parting ways with Eric B., Rakim went on to drop two solo albums, The 18th Letter/The Book of Life in 1997, and his 1999 follow-up The Master. ^[14]

In October 2000, the rap world was stunned when Dr. Dre announced he had recently signed Rakim to his Aftermath label while on the set of Eminem’s “Stan” video.^[15 ^]

“We just signed Rakim to our label, straight up,” he proclaimed. “Rakim is on Aftermath, and the name of his album is going to be Oh My God. This is going to be the biggest hip-hop record ever, straight up and coming at you from Aftermath, baby, so fuck all of y’all.”

According to an MTV News article, the LP was also slated to feature production from DJ Premier and one of Dr. Dre’s proteges, Mel Man.^[16 ^]

Unfortunately, after Rakim moved to California, he and Dr. Dre had their share of creative differences while trying to churn out the release.^[17 ^]

“I guess listening to certain songs that I did– listening to stories– I guess he wanted me to do that…a gangsta rap album, I guess,” Rakim shared during an in-depth Vlad TV interview with Touré.^[18 ^]

“That’s his formula, but I thought at that point I should be doing something different. I was maturing at the time. I had grown up a little bit, trying to elevate with [my] music, as well. I’m looking at it like ‘Yeah, get with Dre.’ I wanted to make a mega project that wasn’t…of course it’s hip-hop, but I wanted everybody to be able to listen to it, get this opportunity. I wanted to make the best of it. But, like I said, we would sit in the studio, and he’d put on a beat, and he would sit next to me and be like ‘Yo, I want you to talk that shit on this one.’ I’m like ‘Dre, that’s what you say on every track you play, bruh. When you gonna let me rhyme on something?? Why I gotta beef with everybody?'”

Unable to agree on a creative direction for the project, the pair “mutually decided to go their separate ways” in 2003.^[19 ^] “There are reasons, but I really can’t get into them, just basically creative differences. And he’s already talking to other [labels],” Zach Katz shared in a statement.^[20^]

Rakim’s Triumphant Return

In 2024, Rakim made his long-awaited return to the hip-hop game after a 15 year hiatus with a collaborative track, “Be Ill,” featuring Kurupt and Masta Killa from his then-upcoming album G.O.D.’s Network (Reb7rth).^[21]

A special edition of the album was also released as a six-inch vinyl with “REB7RTH” on the A side and “Love is the Message” on the B side.^[22]With only 500 copies pressed, the album showcased an all-star lineup including Masta Killa, Kurupt, Nipsey Hussle, Snoop Dogg, and Planet Asia. ^[23]

^[1]https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Concise_Guide_to_Hip_Hop_Music/9U1ABAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22rakim%22+changed+hip+hop+rhyme+scheme&pg=PA81&printsec=frontcover

^[2]Ibid.

^[3]Ibid.

^[4] https://maximumfun.org/news/rakim-allah-interview/

^[5]https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Concise_Guide_to_Hip_Hop_Music/9U1ABAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22rakim%22+changed+hip+hop+rhyme+scheme&pg=PA81&printsec=frontcover

^[6]Ibid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hINkR3i-1cM&ab_channel=JennellTung

^[7]Ibid.

^[8]Ibid.

^[9]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hINkR3i-1cM&ab_channel=JennellTung

^[10]https://www.allmusic.com/artist/rakim-mn0000389137#biography

^[11] https://www.npr.org/2018/08/27/642400564/rakim-reflects-on-his-life-in-hip-hop-and-what-happened-with-eric-b