When God speaks, you listen. Hip-hop pioneer Rakim -- who was called "the God MC" long before Jay-Z -- said it best when describing the significance of his current "Hip Hop Live!" tour with the Wu-Tang Clan's Ghostface Killah and indie star Brother Ali.
"It's more like we're making a statement," Rakim said recently. "We all kind of climbed the same tree. We love that raw, sampled sound of hip-hop. So it was a smart setup taking these brothers on the road."
For Rakim, the message is simple: The style of hip-hop he helped pioneer in the 1980s -- a gritty New York sound with streetwise, intelligent lyrics -- still matters. Hip Hop Live! is a rare chance for fans to see three like-minded MCs from three different eras on the same bill, rocking a style that's almost extinct on commercial radio.
For Minneapolis' hometown hero Brother Ali, it's a dream come true.
"I'm excited as hell," Ali said last week, on the eve of the tour's first gig in Los Angeles. "Rakim is one of the greatest MCs of all time. It's weird, man, to have an icon growing up and then fuck around and become friends with him. That's incredible. I'll never get over it."
For many purists, Rakim is the greatest of all time (Ali said he's tied for No. 1 with Melle Mel and KRS-One, in case you're keeping tabs). Ali sees the tour as a chance for his young fans to finally see the man who influenced so many. And if Ghostface carried on Rakim's hard-core, noncommercial stance through the '90s and '00s, then Ali may represent the future.
Before Rakim, rap was simple. Hip-hop was mostly party music rhymed in standard couplets. Then in 1987, Rakim and his producer, Eric B., released their debut "Paid in Full," introducing complex rhyme structures such as internal rhymes and multisyllable rhymes. And Rakim was dead serious about his craft -- "I Ain't No Joke" was the album's first song. Rakim recorded into the late '90s, but has been relatively quiet since a dream deal with Dr. Dre went sour a few years ago. Now Rakim, 39, plans to release his first album in eight years in early 2008.
"It's really clear that a lot of thought went into every verse he's ever written," Ali said. "I know I got that from him. Any Rakim song, you can just say the words and they should be able to stand by themselves." To demonstrate, Ali breaks into a famous Rakim rap about the writing process from the 1987 song "I Know You Got Soul": "I start to think and then I sink into the paper like I was ink/When I'm writing I'm trapped in between the lines/I escape when I finish the rhyme."Like that," Ali said. "His whole body of work is like that."
