Paid in Full was the third hip hop album I got, after 36 Chambers and Fear of a Black Planet. I immediately thought I made a mistake in buying it. The beats were simplistic and super repetitive, and literally every line of the entire album is about how good Rakim is at rapping. They were also (apparently) one of the first groups to start the obsession of hip hop with materialism - as seen by the cover. Paid in Full is definitely a "true" hip hop album - not a lot of obvious crossover appeal.
There's something to be said for musical shock treatment, because after a couple days of listening to this, I started to really like it. It's completely true that Rakim talks about the same exact thing the whole time, but he's such a good rapper that you don't really care. As for the music, it's full of 80's sounding samples and scratching. That actually gives it a cool atmosphere (at least for someone who's heard only one such album). Erik B was apparently influential and very good at what he did, but I'm not in a great position to judge that. The stuff is pretty memorable though. On certain tracks the beats sound kind of jagged with the scratching and accents not always falling right on beat, which I liked. There are also a couple instrumental tracks on here which are relatively complex.
Ultimately, my experience with Paid in Full is the reason why I like buying albums on the strength of reputation without heavily listening to them first. If I had downloaded it, I probably would have listened to Paid in Full a couple times and then written it off.
One last thing to say about Paid in Full: it reminds me of John Cage.
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