I always wanted to kind of make the listener feel like it was them that I was talking about, or to the point that I could say the rhyme, and feel like it's them saying it.
RakimWhat I want to do right now is give hip hop back to the hood. Before it was a neighborhood thing where it belonged to the hood and the rappers were reporting and there were rules and parameters. Now it seems like the artist's game.
RakimWhenever I sat down to write something it was never anything I took lightly. It was something that I'd want you, somebody in Japan, and somebody [over there to hear it].
Rakim