Video : Eric B & Rakim - Microphone Fiends
Eric B. & Rakim were an East Coast hip hop duo who popularised the jazz-influenced hip hop of the late 1980s.
Despite spawning no major chart hits, the pair is generally considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking groups in the history of hip-hop, due to both Eric B.'s jazzy production and Rakim's revolutionary rapping style, which was smooth, seemingly effortless, and used remarkably complex rhyming schemes involving internal-rhymes and sophisticated metaphors.
It is the general consensus that almost all modern MCs have been influenced in some way by Rakim's rapping technique. Eric B.'s use of a James Brown sample in "I Know You Got Soul" introduced the "godfather rap" period of extensive use of old R&B and soul music as background music for hip-hop songs.
