Rakim

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Jesse Thorn

Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This September is Rap Month at Bullseye - we're celebrating 50 years of hip-hop with a full month rappers. First up: Rakim! He changed the rap game forever. He's one half of the groundbreaking hip-hop duo, Eric B. and Rakim. And a legendary solo rapper in his own right. On Bullseye, Rakim kicks off Rap Month by looking back at his almost 40 years in hip-hop. He gets into how he met Eric B. and his mentorship with Marley Marl. Plus, how his career has changed now that he's in his 50s.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFund.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:21.5	It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.
0:23.7	This month, on our show, we are going to be doing something a little bit different.
0:27.6	We are ringing in 50 years of hip-hop by interviewing all rappers all month and we're kicking things
0:35.1	off with, in my opinion, the greatest ever to do it, rock him.
0:40.8	I think there is a line between what you might call early hip-hop and modern hip-hop.
0:47.3	And that line, I say it's a line, it's basically a guy, rock him.
0:53.2	Take a listen to Five Minutes of Funk, which is a great song from 1984 by the rap group
1:00.2	Houdini.
1:10.9	The MC there is Joliel Hutchins and listen to his flow.
1:16.7	The rhymes hit with the snare drum, one, two, three, four, I mean, that is a classic style.
1:41.2	And it's that way pretty much throughout all the titular Five Minutes of Funk.
1:48.2	And again, not a bad song, actually a great song.
1:53.5	It's just back then that's kind of how most rap songs went.
1:57.6	Now, fast forward, three years.
2:01.8	This is I Ain't No Joke by Eric B. and rock him.
2:05.4	Rock him is the rapper here and it's very, very different.
2:32.0	Look, this is a rap about rapping.
2:34.5	The subject matter isn't exactly revolutionary.
2:37.8	And rock him was barely old enough to vote when he put this down.
2:46.0	But when you hear it, the complexity, the rhythm, the flow, it is both intricate and effortless.
2:55.8	The rhymes flit between the abstract and the concrete metaphor and reality in mind bending
	...

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