REVIEWS

	Rakim
	The Archive: Live, Lost & Found
	Koch

By PAUL FARBER

Published: June 18, 2008

 

If rap had a Mount Rushmore, Rakim would have an etched place reserved for him in its stone facade. And while The R continues to flow with precision on The Archive, his third attempt at a bounce back album in the last decade-plus (1997’s The 18th Letter and 1999’s The Master), he seems more frozen in his gloried past than bent on updating to further his reign.

 

With four new studio tracks and an 18-song live set of recorded concert tracks, the compilation is almost entirely cast in hindsight, and sputters content-wise in the innovation department. On one of the new tracks “Hip Hop,” Ra promises to bring an "old school feel with new school slang," yet he comes across as a bygone and disgruntled super lyricist. On “Word on the Street,” while still rhyming with an impressive sense of meter, his boast of being “syndicated like your favorite TV show” lends to the charge that The Archive lacks in any sort of post-millennial imaginative approach. His live offerings find the God MC at home on the stage, but do little to capture anything newfangled about the classic tracks he recites. (He even half-steps, messing up a cue on “Guess Who’s Back.") Rakim is an MC with a timeless flow, but The Archive is no time capsule, just a time bomb past its prime.

               

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