The 18th Letter

When I was eleven years old, I’d saved £20 exactly and wanted to buy one of those Nike hats with the Goofy ears, I’d thought about it all day at school. Being eleven years old though that £20 was soon £10 and an Our Price voucher for ‘£5 off when you spend £10’. I wasn’t going to get my Goofy hat this week. I wasn’t coming home empty handed though, I hit Our Price with my money plus coupon offer and proceeded to pretend I knew who any of these albums were by. Wu Tang? I knew them. But I had all the Wu Tang Our Price were selling at that point. Plus I didn’t really want a CD. I wanted a cassette for my walkman. The cassette section of Our Price was basically non-existent at this point, one concave of a small, but not tiny store on Brixton High-Street. I didn’t want a Blur greatest hits tape, I knew that. Pulp? Maybe. Frugality drew my eye toward a double-cassette album I’d been made aware of just a week before.

Nudging the elbow of my infinitely more knowledgeable music fan brother “Look at this fruity shit!” I mumbled, while a bare shouldered, bald headed and neatly groomed goateed man glared back at me with sensual "come hither" eyes “Yeah...” he responded barely lifting an eyelid “Oh shit. Nah. That’s Rakim” he immediately corrected himself “He’s one of the best. I heard the artwork for this album was shit. Wow. That album’s got a greatest hits on it though.” I nodded “Looks fucking fruity though” dismissing the CD to the back of the rack I turned my attention to one of the more visually appealing albums by Cyprus Hill, skulls on a mountain, that’s what album covers should look like.



My music choices at eleven were pretty much restricted to whatever The Box had on rotation, so the idea that I could own an album my brother hadn’t heard by a rapper my brother liked, that was too great an opportunity to pass-up. I’ve always been really bad at buying things, investing in my soul. I could keep £10 in my pocket for a week right? Why not? I’d lasted a full 6 hours with £20 in my pocket today. I’d better buy this or I’m going to have nothing to show for my saving. I paced from one end of the store to the other while I considered my purchase, I’ve always lived in my own head, I'm constantly at war with my impulses and the idea of spending every penny I own on an album by a fruity looking beardy man’s double album annoyed me no end. Can I not find a reduced to clear Fresh Prince album? I’d buy that. Then I’d still have money. But I don’t want that. I want this. Do I? It looks so fruity. I’d have to explain the cover to everybody who saw it at school. I know what I’m like, I’m just going to piss this money up the wall on slightly more expensive than usual fizzy drinks. Fuck it! Rakim, let’s do this.

I slid the first tape into my walkman before leaving the store, replacing my Wu Tang ‘C.R.E.A.M/ Da Mystery of Chessboxing’ EP that didn’t fill a quarter of tape and had to be rewound every 10 minutes. Even if this album’s shit I won’t have to do that any more. Stepping out into the rain I was fairly sure I’d made the right decision. I don’t think anybody would argue that ‘The 18th Letter’ was anything more than an average LP recorded by an exhausted and uninterested Rakim chasing a commercial sound he helped create but had long since left him behind, but between the DJ Premier produced ‘It’s Been A Long Time’ and ‘New York’ coupled with eleven-year-old mind exploding lines like “Still leave authors and writers with author-writess” and a level of spirituality Wu Tang just weren’t affording me at that time, Rakim’s first solo album was as important an album to me as any I've heard since.

I was first in line for Ra’s next album ‘The Master’, an even more offensive cover couldn’t this time be saved by DJ Premier. At thirteen years, I was a little more savvy and a little more war weary. Last year he released his first album in a decade ‘Seventh Seal’ originally recorded for Dr Dre’s Aftermath label, it was met with absolute indifference. His fans barely raised an eyebrow, the critics barely raised a pen in boredom and I’m ashamed to say I still haven’t heard it.

Was there a point to this blog? Yes. Inspired by the life-changing Rakim-Allah I’ve decided to atone for a few sins over the next couple of months. The first will be to listen to and review ‘Seventh Seal’. Which I will do.

If I’m not listening to Rakim what am I listening to?



1. Freeway & Jake One/ The Stimulus Package
2. Raekwon/ Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2
3. B.O.B & DJ Drama/ May 25th
4. Wale/ Attention Deficit
5. Blakroc (The Black Keys)/ Blakroc