Halftimeonline: I know you don’t want to reveal too much about the situation but looking at where you’ve been at Aftermath to MCA and Universal how is this situation going to be different?

Rakim: Well it’s where every artist tries to position themselves. The money I’m gonna see for this project, I’m talking the deal that was put together, the money from every unit being sold is what I feel every artist should see. That’s what took it so long to make it pop. Cut the middle man out and you know what that means you gotta get that paper. The paper is about in place and once that’s done it’s on and popping. The difference is the money you can definitely say that.

Halftimeonline: Talking about the new album you said how each project represents a sequence of your life. Going back to the beginning could you explain what sequence you were in during each album and what sequence the new album represents?

Rakim: Right now you want to know where I’m at?

Halftimeonline: Well, I know you like to go from the end to beginning so either way you want.

Rakim: Haha. We’ll go from the top though man. In the beginning it was basically me introducing myself to the world, trying to make a name for myself and introduce my style to the world. At that point I was a young dude fresh out the streets, 16 or 17, when I wrote that album. I saw a lot when I was young. The first time I got arrested I was twelve years old. So my first album is coming from a young kid in the hood, getting knowledge of self and trying to find a different path. Once that path was dug then it was Follow the Leader. It was like yea this is what it is and this is what I’m doing. Everyone greeted me with open arms on the first album and it’s like this is what I’m doing so follow me. Not follow me but follow the lyrics. Follow me into a solo, get in the flow. I felt like I made a name for myself and the world accepted my style, then I took them a little deeper in Follow the Leader. After that it was doing different things in hip hop. My album after that was more of me introducing different styles and trying to concrete the path that I was taking as far as the righteous path. You could do hip hop, you could be a hard hip hop artist without going the other way. Back then it was pop not no killer killer shit. It was you could sell a couple records and keep your integrity or you could go pop and sell a bunch of records and be gone tomorrow. I was trying to stick to my guns at that point. At the same time me and Eric B was going through our little shit back and forth as far as what he wanted to do and what I wanted to do. I was trying to stay true to what I feel, what I started and what I felt the world definitely accepted me on.

Now we’ll take it up to The 18th Letter. Right there was the comeback. Letting the world know I grew a little bit and at the same time mature hip hop was good too. It was a little low in the hood its real low now. The hood don’t know what it is but back then it was a little more culturized. Everybody had a little culture with them. The Public Enemy fans, to the Rakim fans to the X-Can fans, to the KRS-ONE fans to Poor Righteous Teachers. There was a lot of consciousness in the air. I came back when the conscious level was low. I wanted to show that there is still consciousness in hip hop and at the same time reintroduce myself to the world that’s why we put the book of life with the 18th letter. With the Master at that point I feel that the game was so watered down that the label didn’t know what to do about it. They felt like I needed radio songs and more radio friendly with my studio work. At that point I felt like I had to make a change not knowing what the change was. The change I was supposed to make wasn’t towards that just to elevate my craft and futurize it. They had me doing some radio kinda shit and I kinda fell for it because the labels was on some Rakim is hard to work with, Rakim don’t want to do this and we can’t get Rakim to do that, he don’t want to do interviews nahmean. So I wanted to make myself a little more accessible and if ya’ll remember rap at that time it was Puff Daddy. You can tell I did not get on no Puff Daddy shit but my tracks was a little more friendly. I had to understand that what I was supposed to do then was get back into the lab and start digging through the crates and reinvent my tracks. Once I get the track I know what to do with it. With these different labels like MCA I did some things I felt I shouldn’t have done.

After that I went out to Cali to try and get with Dre to pop that off. My idea was to bridge the gap since Pac and Big left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. My thing was to try and bridge the gap and bring raw hiphop back. My main thing was I thought the last thing I’d have to worry about was tracks. Things didn’t work for a reason. I take the good with the bad and then I came back to NY and I really put my CEO cap on man. I had to go through the everyday phone calls and everyday questions and they would come back with ten more questions to get an understanding. It’s like talking apples and oranges to people because not everyone understands the record business. What I want to do right now is give hip hop back to the hood. Before it was a neighborhood thing where it belonged to the hood and the rappers were reporting and there were rules and parameters. Now it seems like the artist’s game. Now it seems like hip hop belongs to the people you see in the videos and radios. So I want to give it bring it back to the hood, make a statement for NY to put us back in our proper perspective, and of course let them know that Ra still spits fire. It’s something about this rap game that the older I get the wiser and more skillful I get. I think things are gonna change. I’m gonna take the age limit off of hip hop. It’s gonna be what they want. It’s hard to explain but I know what they want. That’s why me and Dre ain’t work out because I felt that they didn’t want me to do what I was about to do in California. I think I’m focused right now. Still hungry 20 06 no tricks in 06. The tables turn twenty years later where I’m doing an interview talking about the new album.

Halftimeonline: What can fans expect from the album in terms of who you’ve been working with and if you’re gonna get back into production?

Rakim: You know I can’t tell you what collabos I’m gonna do. I still believe in the element of surprise. That feeling of somebody getting the CD putting it in and being like oh shit! That’s the door to door salesman’s best shit when they can come through with something and wow a motherfucker. I’m not going to saturate the album with collabs but it’s a few people in the industry that I respect a lot that have been showing me love throughout the years that I want to do some joints with. People that are going to make a statement when you hear me with them. And a lot of big time producers have been showing me a lot of love. It’s gonna be something that they’re not going to expect but at the end of the day they’ll be like that’s what he was supposed to do.

Halftimeonline: You keeping it tight on us man!

Rakim: I believe in the element of surprise. And then it’s like sometimes you say I’m about to do a joint with Quincy Jones and then it’s like oh he gonna do a joint with Quincy Jones! Then when they hear it’s not what they expected. It’s a dope joint but they spent two months drawing a picture about what Rakim and Quincy Jones is gonna do. So yea the element of surprise of just throwing it in and hearing it and not dwelling on it for months is better. I think it’s better for the consumer too because they’ll be happier with it. It’s almost like Christmas man who wants to know what’s in the gift. Haha

Halftimeonline: That’s true I always think that when I hear people say something like oh imagine Jay-Z with dadada it will be a classic. It’s like you never know until you hear it. Just because you put two people together doesn’t mean it’s automatically classic. I never got that.

Rakim: Exactly. Me neither man.

Halftimeonline: Also when people say producer I think they only think beat maker. If you have a real producer who is producing the track then it’s the relationship between him and the artist that makes the ill track.

Rakim: Exactly. There are a lot of young brothers that you never heard of but they are coming to the meetings and to the studio with fire man. It’s like yo what did you say your name was bruh? It’s a beautiful thing. It’s crazy because a minute ago a big time producer would get $150K a track. Now you got these young producers coming in getting $2,500 and getting triple platinum joints so the price for tracks is coming down. The hip hop game is so crazy it moves around and changes like slang in the hood. One week the word could be good and in the next week it’s like yo duke that shit’s not good. That shit don’t even mean what you think it mean now man. It’s a good thing though because I think what we need to take advantage of is changing the game like that. Every time someone come out with an album don’t change the whole style up but don’t do what they are expecting. Surprise them. That’s another thing yo rappers are scared to bring new styles out. There’s so many different ways we can be flowing but everybody chooses to flow the generic way. Majority rules but it opened up that’s why I like people like Kanye. He do whatever track he want to do and flow how he want to flow on it and he ain’t talking the everyday bang bang and kilo. A lot of people live it and grew up around it but if you do 15 records on your joint all 15 don’t have to be the same shit.

Halftimeonline: Ok so we not getting any collabs and we not gonna know any producers…

Rakim: Haha

Halftimeonline: What about some concepts? Can you give us at least one concept for maybe a song where it’s like the normal cat wouldn’t flip it like that?

Rakim: Aiight, the name of the album is The Seventh Seal. Are ya’ll familiar with what that means?

Halftimeonline: That’s in the book of Revelations.

Rakim: No doubt. What I’m doing is taking the Seventh Seal and making it relevant to hip hop and life itself. You see it everyday with the tsunamis and the earthquakes its evident man. The glaciers are melting, global warming, we at war, planes crashing into the jump off, the flooding that’s the seventh seal. I’m gonna make it similar rap and let them know the same thing and at the same time why the seventh seal is coming about. I’m gonna have some fun with it but at the same time I’m gonna open some people’s eyes. That’s the concept of my next album. So back to that hip hop is dead thing it’s like if it keeps in the direction its going, not saying that the Dirty South, East Coast, Midwest or Cali is killing it, but if everyone keeps saying it there must be some truth to the statement. We’re nearing the end. It feels like the same thing is happening to hip hop.

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Posted by Jbutters on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006 and is filed under HIP HOP ICON SERIES.