Eric B. & Rakim release 'Eric B. Is President'
Zakia Records issues Eric B. & Rakim's debut single 'Eric B. Is President' b/w 'My Melody.' Built on Marley Marl's sample of Fonda Rae's 'Over Like a Fat Rat,' the track introduces Rakim's then-unprecedented internal-rhyme-and-multisyllabic-flow approach and signals the shift toward the lyrically dense MC style that Paid in Full (1987) would consolidate.
Why it matters
July 1986. Zakia Records put out the first single ever released by Eric B. & Rakim, a 12-inch with "Eric B. Is President" on the A-side and "My Melody" on the B. The producer was Marley Marl, the same Queensbridge wunderkind who had cut "Roxanne's Revenge" with Shanté two years earlier. The beat was built around a sample of Fonda Rae's "Over Like a Fat Rat." The voice on the song belonged to a then-eighteen-year-old MC named William Griffin from Long Island, who went by Rakim. What Rakim did, on that twelve-inch, in three minutes, was rewrite the rules of how rap could rhyme. Before Rakim, most MCs rhymed bar-end to bar-end, single syllable to single syllable. Rakim brought internal rhyme. Multi-syllable rhyme. Compound rhyme. He treated the bar as a thing you could decorate inside, not just at the seam. Every "lyrically skilled" MC since (Big Daddy Kane, Nas, Jay-Z, Eminem, Black Thought, Kendrick) builds on what Rakim opens up here. You can put on the record right now and you can hear the gear-shift happening. It is unmistakable.
Branches
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