"Paid in Full" is released

Why it matters

The title track of Paid in Full came out as a single August 1, 1987. The original is a short, locked groove with Rakim describing a hustler's exit plan ("thinkin' of a master plan / 'cause ain't nothin' but sweat inside my hand") over a James Brown loop. Clean record. Quietly perfect. What the song became, six months later, is a different thing. In early 1988 a London duo named Coldcut got commissioned to remix "Paid in Full" for the UK market. They made what they called the "Seven Minutes of Madness" mix, which kept Rakim's vocals but rebuilt the entire instrumental around a sample of Yemenite-Israeli singer Ofra Haza's "Im Nin'Alu." That remix became a UK Top 20 hit, broke Eric B. & Rakim outside the US, and is generally considered one of the founding records of what people would later call trip-hop or the broader UK club-rap tradition. The original is the better song. The remix is the more historically interesting one. You should listen to both. They tell you different things.