West Coast MC Big Tray Deee says he has great respect for Eric B. & Rakim’s Paid In Full. He explains that the 1987 LP dropped at the perfect time to have maximum impact in hip-hop.
“I was 21 years old and the streets was, it was the height of everything, the height of hip-hop, the height of gang culture, the height of drug selling and abuse, it was just everything was going on,” Tha Eastsidaz member says during an episode of “Best Albums.” “That was something that we could put in our cars or throw on when we was chilling at the spot getting our hustle on and just let it play all the way through. The intricacy of Rakim’ s lyricism and the drive of Eric B.’s production, the marriage was, it was unbelievable. It just gave you the spirit to get out there to do what needed to be done and get your shine on.”
Big Tray Deee continues to detail how Rakim‘s pen inspired him. Songs like “I Ain’t No Joke” and the title track really challenged him to take his own lyricism to the next level. He did a remake of “Paid In Full” on his Long Beach State of Mind mixtape, which was released in 2014.
“That’s one thing people probably not familiar with about hip-hop, it all depends on what region you’re in and what your activity is, you take the songs and you change parts of it up to suit your city and things like that,” he explains of taking the song and making it his own. “That’s what really makes hip-hop unique and fun.”
Another standout track is “My Melody,” which Big Tray Deee says helped him through a prison term. He reemphasizes that Eric B.’s production was just as influential as Rakim’s words.
“I had a homie who I was close with back then and come 9:30, 10:00, we would fold the mattress over on the bunk and use that steel and get a toothbrush or a grease jar and we would just bang on the bed ’til one or two in the morning doing the whole Paid In Full album,” he recalls of his time behind bars. “And everybody, ‘Aye, “My Melody” again.’ And we’d just be up half the night just going and just learning his patterns and formats and stuff. When I began to write rhymes, that was just a natural influence to me because I thought he was one of the dopest lyricists ever and one of the best MCs to ever pick up a mic. So I give him a lot of props for just becoming an artist who I am, to Rakim and to Eric B. because those beats, without those tracks, woulda just been a cappella.”
Big Tray Deee reflects on how Paid In Full transcended regionalism and is now solidified as a classic hip-hop album.
“That guy did a whole lot for hip-hop, man,” he says, referring to Rakim. “It started over there and it reached all the way over here. Not saying he’s the originator or nothing like that, but his style and his confidence and his approach to rap and his vocabulary and his structure to words and it seemed like Eric B. had the perfect backdrop for what he needed to say.”