|
Rakim was always a tid bit ahead of his time, and when he was suppose to release his first solo album without Eric B. aka his 5th album in 1995, MCA Records got sold & changed under the Universal Music Group, when all those people got fired & three to four songs got leaked ("Remember", "Shades Of Black", & "Once Upon A Rhyme", "I Get Visual"), so Universal scrapped that album and wanted him to record a new material for UMG which eventually became "18th Letter"; surprisingly they kept "Remember That" from the old sessions.
Even though most would never want to tarnish Rakim's legacy to me Rakim became one of those emcees who wasn't in a class of his own anymore, it was a lot of talented emcees out in 97/98, between Loud Records & Rawkus Records it was the time of dope underground artists were getting their shine and with dope producers to match, and to me Rakim got lost in that mix of thinking he was the leader of the pack when he was now just another kat in the crowd.
Yeah "18th Letter" had production from Premier & Pete, but so did a lot of other rappers, it was the norm to have one of those guys producing a track for a rapper/emcee, to me the album was solid but lacked something special, to me those remixes at the end should've been left off, a few of the old leaked songs should've been on there especially "Various Shades Of Black", "Stay A While" & "When I'm Flowin'" was too long both should've been three minutes tops, plus he needed an uptempo song on there.
https://tinyurl.com/y4ba6hog
--------- "We in here talking about later career Prince records & your fool ass is cruising around in a time machine trying to collect props for a couple of sociopathic degenerates" - s.blak
|