It’s Christmas 1987 and I’m 12. I’ve just been given two turntables and a mixer that don’t match. I’m in my bedroom trying to scratch, without a clue what I’m doing. The soundtrack to my days that year is records like Paid in Full by Eric B. & Rakim.
I can’t remember the first record I put on, but it would have been something like that. I couldn’t mix. I loved every minute anyway.
So when Rakim wrote a book, I was always going to read it. Sweat the Technique came out in 2019 and I read it that October. It’s his life story, and it’s also a look inside the head of one of the greatest writers hip hop has ever had.
Rakim is basically your favourite MC’s favourite MC, whatever anyone says. He changed the way lots of people rap. Before him, a lot of MCs shouted over the beat. He came in calm, cool and precise, with rhymes inside rhymes and a flow that slid across the rhythm instead of stamping on it.
Here’s an example of how far that reached. DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s “Summertime” is Will Smith paying homage to Rakim. Listen to them side by side. That’s where that flow came from.
Spend enough hours in a bedroom counting beats and you start to notice what he does with timing. He plays with where the words land against the beat, in a way you feel long before you can explain it. The book is the closest you’ll get to him explaining it himself.
What I love about the book is how much he gives away about the craft. He grew up on Long Island in a musical family, surrounded by jazz, and he played the saxophone as a kid. He talks about wanting to rhyme the way John Coltrane played, improvising, pushing every line somewhere new. Once you know that, you hear his records differently.
Eric B. & Rakim’s run in the late 1980s still sounds incredible. Eric B. Is President. I Know You Got Soul. Paid in Full itself. Eric B. on the decks and Rakim on the mic was a simple set-up. Between them they set a standard a whole generation tried to reach. Reading the book, you get the story behind those records from the man who wrote the words.
He also talks about his faith, about numbers and patterns, and about how all of it fed into the way he put words together. There’s a lot of thought behind something that sounds that effortless.
He’s open about the work, too. The book’s subtitle calls it revelations on creativity, and that’s what you get. How he builds a verse, and how he thinks about rhythm and space. It’s written for fans, but anyone who writes anything will find something to steal.
The line from his records that’s in my guide is a perfect example. “The rhyme that I’m stylin, smooth as a violin but rough enough to break New York from Long Island.”
Smooth and rough at the same time. That’s Rakim in one line.
As a DJ, the title hits home too. Sweat the technique. Every DJ starts in the same place: a bedroom, headphones on, door shut, learning the boring bits and getting them wrong until they’re right.
Nobody claps in a bedroom. That’s sort of the point. Rakim’s book is full of his own version of that room, the hours of work behind records that sound so easy. I wrote about my own version in Bedroom decks, 1987: where it all started.
You don’t have to be a hip hop fan to get something from this book. If you make anything, whether that’s music, writing, talks or a business, there’s a lesson in how much work goes into making something look easy. And if you are a fan, you’re in for a treat.
The man’s a genius, a legend of hip hop, and this is his story. It’s one of the music books in my free guide, 50 Books That Shaped Me, if you fancy reading about the people behind the records.
Two decks that didn’t match, a kid who couldn’t mix, and Rakim on the turntable. Not a bad place to start.
