Rakim

Previously: DJ Premier Remembers Jeru The Damaja’s ‘The Sun Rises In The East’ 20 Years Later DJ Premier Didn’t Like The Beat To Nas’ “Memory Lane” 15 Of The Greatest Rapper-Producer Duos Of All Time DJ Premier Wouldn’t Have Gone Back to Cleveland If He Were LeBron James

Check Out All Our Coverage Of The XXL 2014 Freshmen Class Right Here Previously: Nas Shares Advice For The XXL Freshmen 2014 Class Pharrell Shares Advice For Freshmen Producers 22 Former XXL Freshmen Have Advice For The 2014 Class 12 Rappers And Producers On The Best Advice They Ever Received

On May 19, the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame is pulling out all the stops to honor multiple hip-hop legends at its award show. Along with celebrating inductees like Sugar Hill Gang, Busy Bee, Spoonie G & The Treacherous Three, and Mr Magic, amongst others, the show will celebrate EZ Rock's contribution with a huge tribute performance. ...

Last week, XXL brought you the 10 greatest rapping duos of all time, our unranked list of the ten one-two punches that we've seen work off each other lyrically and effortlessly. The Clipse, Mobb Deep, Jay and 'Ye—they're all in there, trading bars and swapping metaphors at the genre's highest level. We m...

 

One half of the legendary duo turns 52 today.

Phonte is a noted fan of Breaking Bad, and often takes to Twitter to unload his opinions on both that show and others. Last night, he began comparing rappers to different television shows, with entertaining results and some spot-on parallels; Jay Z as The Wire, Nas as Breaking Bad and Rakim as The Sopranos being the holy trinity that he identifies. Check the twe...

As we wind down a month-long look back over the last 150 issues of XXL and the biggest hip-hop events during that time, some of our friends and supporters hit us up with some-outs that we're sharing in this video. We'd like to thank our readers, fans, haters, staff, rappers, managers, producers, labels, executives, PR people and everyone else for the last 150 issues and in the words of Snoop, &quo

DMX may be making headlines for anything other than his music, but this should turns things around. Today, Darkman X drops “Don’t Call Me” featuring Rakim. While the God MC fires off his exceptional lyricism, X comes in with some reflective lines about his life so far. On the hook is s...

On the strength of some genre-defining albums and a flow that birthed a thousand MC's, Rakim has a clear claim to the status of one of hip-hop's leading lights. But over a 25-plus-year career, and with a dwindling output that has seen him drop only three albums in the past decade and a half, there are a lot of unsolved questions and mysteries surrounding the original God MC—after all, what happene

Rakim, DJ Premier, Big Daddy Kane, More Talk Hip-Hop's 40th

For the past year, Rakim has shared countless stories on coming up as an MC that goes to show his influence on hip-hop is still important. He’s appeared on many underground mixtapes this year—Macro Polo’s Newport Authority 2 and Aaron LaCrate’s Milkcrate Athletics—but Ra is just getting warmed up. On his fifth studio album, h...