Rakim

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:20)
Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of maximumfun.org and is distributed by NPR.

**Jesse Thorn** (0:40)
It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorn. So I think that there is a line between what you might call, let's call it early hip hop and modern hip hop. And that line, I mean, I say it's a line, but actually, it's basically a guy. My guest this week, Rakim. Take, for example, Five Minutes of Funk, which is a great song from 1984 by the great rap group Houdini.
The rhyme's hit with the snare drum, one, two, three, four, and it stays that way pretty much throughout all five of the Minutes of Funk. And that is not bad. Actually, it is great. It is a super fun song. Put that on the disco. Watch people get down.
It's just that that's what most rapping was back then. Now, fast forward three years, three years, to 1987 This is I Ain't No Joke by Eric B and Rakim. Rakim is rapping here. And what he's doing is very, very different.
I mean, subject matter wise, this is a rap about rapping. This isn't revolutionary. There are deeper Rakim rhymes in terms of their content. And you know, let's give him some credit here. He was barely old enough to vote when he wrote this one. But when you hear it, the complexity, the rhythm, the flow, intricate and effortless, the rhymes flit between the abstract and the concrete, metaphor and reality interweave in mind bending ways. Look, if you ask any rapper or any aspiring rapper who was alive at that time, they will tell you the same thing. Rakim changed their life.
It was revolutionary at the time and it still sounds incredible almost four decades later. Now, I have so much to get into with Rakim with whom I talked back in 2023, how he met Eric B, how Marley Marl mentored the duo, how Rakim looks back on his career now that he's in his 50s. And I don't want to waste any more of your time before we get into it. Let's kick things off with another classic from Eric B and Rakim, Don't Sweat the Technique.

**Rakim** (4:21)
Thank you so much, man. Thanks for the welcome, man.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:23)
I'm very genuinely thrilled. So you grew up in Long Island, which at the time that you were growing up, could have felt pretty far from the beginnings of hip-hop.

**Rakim** (4:35)
Yeah, indeed.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:37)
So did it feel like it was coming from a long way away?

**Rakim** (4:40)
Yeah, I always felt like I was on the outside looking at it. And also knowing the speed of things in the city compared to living in Long Island.
I knew they had the advantage and all the resources right there. So it was definitely hard trying to, I guess, make your mark.

**Jesse Thorn** (5:04)
Did you first hear hip-hop on the radio?

**Rakim** (5:07)
No.
Growing up in Wynndance as a young kid, there was always DJs in the park, black parties, and even my brother used to have parties at the house. Luckily, my brother knew the DJs personally, so they used to bring their equipment over to the house and sometimes let them hold it for a week or two. So I was always around it, fortunately, at a very young age. I was listening to hip hop before the first rap record came out, King Tim the Third, Fat Back Bad. I remember sitting in the basement with my brother and his friends, one of them a DJ, Paul Garrard, his name was DJ Maniac. I remember the day he came to the house and told my brother, way to you hear this, way to you hear this. He gets downstairs and puts on King Tim the Third, and that's the first record we heard with rap on.

**Jesse Thorn** (6:04)
You're the youngest of five, is that total?

**Rakim** (6:07)
Yes.

**Jesse Thorn** (6:08)
So you had two older brothers and two older sisters.

**Rakim** (6:11)
Yes.

**Jesse Thorn** (6:12)
Were they into hip hop or were they into other stuff?

**Rakim** (6:15)
Well, luckily, my two sisters sang, my two brothers played instruments, my oldest brother Ronnie played keyboards, and he was able to play other instruments and write music.
And my brother Stevie, he played the saxophone. And I tried to do everything Stevie did, so I wound up playing the saxophone as well.