Paid in Full (Eric B. & Rakim song)

Did You Know?

• Engineer Elai Tubo substituted for Patrick Adams, who was too tired to work another overnight session.
• Rakim wrote the lyrics in about five minutes, just before recording, and Eric B added the ad-lib at the end to lengthen the song.

Background

Eric B. was looking for a rapper to pair with his turntable skills at New York's WBLS radio in 1985, and Rakim answered the call. The two started cutting tracks in the home studio of Rakim's friend Marley Marl. After Def Jam's Russell Simmons heard their first single, "Eric B. Is President," he signed them to Island Records. Their debut album was recorded in early 1987, bouncing between Marley Marl's place and Manhattan's Power Play Studios, and came out that July. The British duo Coldcut was hired to create a remix for the "Paid in Full" single, which they called "Seven Minutes of Madness." When the track dropped as the album's fifth and final single, it caught on in American clubs but did even better overseas, hitting the top fifteen in Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. Coldcut got 700 pounds for the job. Eric B. called the remix "girly disco music," while Rakim thought it was the best he had ever heard.

Composition and lyrics

The duo produced the track themselves, using several sampled elements. Eric B. looped a drum portion from "Ashley's Roachclip" by The Soul Searchers, and the bassline came from "Don't Look Any Further" by Dennis Edwards and Siedah Garrett. Toward the end, Eric B. scratches the line "This stuff is really fresh!" from "Change the Beat" by Fab 5 Freddy. Coldcut's remix is a selective remix that adds or subtracts material. They incorporated vocal samples, most prominently the voice of Ofra Haza from her recording "Im Nin'alu". Jonathan More had played the Haza record in clubs and found that lowering its pitch synced with the "Ashley's Roachclip" drum sample. The remix's success boosted Haza's profile; "Im Nin'alu" was remixed and released as a single, and sales of her album Yemenite Songs increased. Haza objected to not being informed of the sample. The remix opens with Geoffrey Sumner saying "This is a journey into sound." The line "Now wait a minute, you better talk to my mother" comes from the film The Big Sleep; an actor portrayed Humphrey Bogart for that portion in the music video. Samples from "I Know You Got Soul", James Brown, Don Pardo, the Peech Boys and the Salsoul Orchestra also appear. "Paid in Full" is believed to be the first hip hop record to layer singing vocal samples over a drumbeat.

Critical reception

"Paid in Full" received acclaim from music critics, who praised its lyrics and production. In 1995, Tim Westwood called it a defining sound of hip hop and praised Rakim as the greatest lyricist. In 2022, the magazine placed it at number 36 on its "200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time". VH1 ranked it number 24 on its "100 Greatest Hip Hop Songs". The Coldcut remix has also been acclaimed for its sample use. Dorian Lynskey of The Guardian called it a "benchmark remix" and included it in his top ten remixes. Chuck Eddy of Spin described it as Coldcut's "greatest moment".