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Follow the Leader
Home > Complete List of "q-r" Artists > Rakim > Item 22
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Follow the Leader
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by Eric B. & Rakim
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$2.44
At Amazon
on 9-12-2008.
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I bought this album on cassette in early '89 when I was in high school. It single-handedly taught me to take hip-hop seriously as art. The purity of Rakim's flow and subject matter on the first three tracks -- which have a slamming momentum and intensity -- makes this a classic landmark of rap formalism. Folks tend to justify liking old tracks by saying "the rhymes and beats were good for the time," but Follow the Leader requires no such contextualizing. If some dude dropped the title track of this album today, people would still flip. Is any rapper with major-label status today kicking figures and similes with the integrity of Rakim in his prime? "Follow me into a solo / get in the flow, and you can picture like a photo / Music mixed mellow maintains to make / Melodies for MCs, motivates the breaks / I'm everlastin, I can go on for days and days / With rhyme displays that engrave deep as X-rays / I can take a phrase that's rarely heard / Flip it; now it's a daily word ..." When this pathbreaking album came out in the 80s, it was considered a mainstream rap release. It occupied the same cultural position that wack commercial rappers do today. Eric & Ra were in rotation on Yo! MTV Raps; their singles got air time on my local FM station. I'm hardly the first person to say this, but to compare the explosion of hip-hop creativity in the late 80s with the derelict, pimp/tight whips/Cristal rappers who dominate BET et al. today is to do some serious reflecting on a cultural decline.
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Follow the Leader
Available from Amazon
Price: $2.44
Updated on 9-12-2008.
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