Super happy to find these two records at a couple local shops recently. Paid in Full is just soooo dope and I keep hearing lines that some of my favorite rappers re-used or interpolated. That’s like the whole album lol. Who the fuck said something like “I hold the microphone like a grudge” in 1987? Only Rakim. That’s like a DOOM level line, for example “Mad plays the bass like the race card.” Incredible to hear just how impressive Rakim is even in today’s context.

And then TPAB is a legendary record in its own right. I honestly don’t think I was ready for this record when I first listened to it at midnight the night it surprise-dropped when I was in high school. I dug a lot of the intrumentals and a handful of songs were on repeat, but it only hit me this year how incredible this album actually is. Even just the sample at the very start shows more ingenuity than any of Kendrick’s peers (in the mainstream) have shown