I came in the door.
I said it before.
I'll never let the mic magnetize me no more.
It was my way of telling the world, “Here I come.”
Today, I am talking to Rakim,
who is widely regarded as one of the most
influential and skilled MCs of all time.
He's changed the game with his flow,
multisyllable rhyming patterns and lyrical content
that would influence Tupac, Nas, Eminem and Jay-Z,
just to name a few.
Now at age 51, Rakim is a published author and continues to make music.
Let's take it back a little bit.
I mean, hip-hop right now is billion-dollar industry.
But at the time when you were coming up,
there weren't cameras coming into the inner cities.
No one was really paying attention to what was going on.
Can you paint the picture of why hip-hop was so important to be the voice for ...
really, for the voiceless.
You know, hip-hop was a genre that was created, right,
you know, in the neighborhood.
You know, we got people, you know, break-dancing
and spinning on their back and spinning on their head.
You got DJs ...
there was DJs spinning around.
It was, you know, entertaining. Better yet, it was also informal.
It was for us.
You know what I mean?
It gave us a sense of direction.
It gave us a feeling of being a part of something.
At the time when you came out,
you had Run-DMC,
you had LL Cool J,
you had a lot of people who had a lot of energy
when they were rapping.
What gave you that confidence at the time to know,
“All right, this is what's hot in hip-hop right now. But I'm going to do me.”
At the end of the day,
I think my style was best for me,
and I think to try to go outside of that box would have ...
changed, you know, the feeling,
you know, that I get ...
or the feeling when
listeners get, when they hear it.
Deep down, I knew that ... that's who I was.
I didn't want to change that.
You're getting ready for sound check.
You're performing tonight in New York, your hometown.
How does this feel to perform in front of the home crowd?
Oh, man.
It's incredible, man.
Um, New York is a place where I kind of fine-tune my show.
Make sure that I'm hitting on all angles.
You were the first to receive a million-dollar contract.
And back then,
no one was getting a million-dollar contract.
What were you thinking when that happened?
All I knew was that we was doing something good.
I'm a little young cat sitting there, and you know everything's going on
from LL inviting ya'll out on his tour.
OK.
Y'all got a chance to go overseas and tour.
OK.
Ya'll got a chance to be on this TV show.
So you starting to realize, like, all right,
then it’s, like, yeah, you're going to get a million-dollar contract.
So it’s, like, it was me realizing that I was becoming not successful in a monetary way,
but I was doing something
right with the pen and the mic.
And you have been someone that from early on has perfected your craft.
How much of the early days when you're in the park as a young’un,
trying to get on, and the
DJ is telling you, "Nah, you can't get on the microphone today."
How much of that is going on?
A lot of DJs be, like, "you’re too young."
They didn't think I could rap, you know what I mean?
But I would stand on line.
I got denied, you know, a lot.
They would tell me, "Who's little brother is this?"
You know. "Come, before you trip over something,"
you know what I mean?
And it just hit me, like, boom.
Instead of just saying, OK, I can't rap.
I'm thinking of how I can get them back.
And that was my first, uh ...
my first experience.
of you know, being a "Microphone Fiend,"
I was a fiend
before I became a teen.
I melted microphones instead of cones of ice cream.
Music orientated so when hip-hop was originated.
Fitted like pieces of puzzles, complicated.
'Cause I grabbed the mic and try to say, "Yes y'all!"
They tried to take it, and say that I'm too small.
Cool, 'Cause I don't get upset.
I kick a hole in the speaker, pull the plug, then I jet ...
The “Microphone Fiend” ... every time I hear that song,
it's just anybody who just loves something
so much, they feel it in their core.
And at some point was told that you can't do this for whatever reason ... too young.
That's what inspired that song, man.
My journey to do something I love.
Last year, you turned 50 ...
Nope.
I turned 51 ...
You turned 51 ... you turned 51 ...
With age comes a lot of wisdom.
Yes.
If you were to talk to ...
your younger self, now that you’ve’ experienced what you’ve experienced
and seen what you've seen,
what advice would you give yourself?
I think I would have told me ... to slow down, take my time.
I think some of the bad things that I've been through
are what kind of shaped me into the person I am today.
So, I don't know if I would tell myself, you know what I mean, too much, but just,
you know, to, focus. Again, man, stay passionate.
You have a song called “Classic," where you have a really dope verse in there.
Timeless. So age don't count in the booth
when your flow stays submerged in the fountain of youth.
You know I believe that, man. I believe in what I'm doing,
You know, stick to my guns and let ’em have it.
So what's next for Rakim?
Yeah, man, I've been, I've been writing scripts, started working on another album,
still performing, still enjoying that aspect of it.
So yeah, I'm looking forward, man, and just trying to inspire people from all walks of life
just to, you know, be the best that they can be because that's
what I had to go through in order to get here.
The sky's the limit.
Still, still.
I appreciate it.
Yo, man, what's going on, man?
Need y’all do me a little favor, man.
Go sit down,
subscribe yourself to the AARP YouTube channel, man.
You’ll find a lot of good information.
A lot of good stuff going on. Power!