real time Rakim…
After a long, tedious and eventually expensive trip to Governor’s Island, the sort of local touristy hang only a PR offensive or a hip hop concert could convince you to visit, it was a blast to find myself at the mainstage watching the legendary rapper Rakim perform his equally legendary “Paid in Full”
So how has the years treated Rakim? Put it this way: people don’t know how to take you on musical journeys like this any more. There is an artistic purity to Rakim even while his tude center stage is more of the same ol’. Everything KRS-One would take for himself, Rakim provides without comment.
The question is where is Eric B.? and the answer is, it is like asking where is Harrison at a Beatles reunion? Missed yes, but not that missed.
Rakim played the 1987 Paid In Full from one end to the other -though not in order, climaxing the set with a steller title track. A little earlier there is a perfect “I Am Not A Joke”. The scratching was only so so and the samp;ing hard to hear but Rakim is even better as a rapper, the best of the sets I saw.
Rakim played the 1987 Paid In Full from one end to the other -though not in order, climaxing the set with a steller title track. A little earlier there is a perfect “I Am Not A Joke”. The scratching was only so so and the samp;ing hard to hear but Rakim is even better as a rapper, the best of the sets I saw.
But
The sound was marred by a bass that overwhelmed everything and a mix so muddy it was pathetic. Reminded me why the knock on rap used to be that it wasn’t an in concert idiom.
The bass is shattering right now on a rabble rousing Boogie Down Crew and some of the best scratching I’ve heard in years.