Note: This is the second article of a series on education and entertainment.  In the first article, I examined three core elements of effective edutainment: it's gotta be real, it's gotta be relevant, and it's gotta rock.  Here, I explore Rakim's 2009 album "The Seventh Seal" in light of these criteria.

#1 - It's real.

Rakim's name is almost synonymous with his art form.  In other words, it's almost impossible to claim that Rakim's rap lyrics are not real because he is a pioneer of rap lyrics.  On songs like "Man Above", where this iconic style turns inward to reflect on his own personal development, this realness is heightened further by the analytic lens of his retrospection.  He traces bad choices he made as a youth to his narrow focus on money ("my goal was gettin it") and the ghetto environment in which he was raised ("times spent in this environment can confuse a child").  Rakim is not content just telling his story; he's got to process it as well.  He doesn't stop at saying that he is "from the hood that's forever sinning", he has to identify the core problem that "life is took for granted here so death is winning".  This productive synthesis of experience has been a fundamental aspect of hip hop since its inception.

"The Seventh Seal" may appear too real for some listeners because of its explicit references to drug sales or violent crime.  He references these topics because he's experienced them as prominent features of a modern, urban environment like New York.  Further examination of the context of such topics makes clear that this album does not endorse violent or illegal behavior.  Instead of glorifying such behaviors, he describes their consequences.  For example, "Documentary of a Gangsta" tells the story of a hoodlum looking to move up in the world.  As he "calls $100 a honey" and women "heifers", he is so focused on money that he objectifies real women as cattle and personifies a $100 bill as a beautiful woman.  This nameless gangsta relentlessly pursues money as a pimp, drug dealer, and armed robber.  Ignoring the violent repercussions of his choices, he "is so in love with the bread that the beef don't matter" ("beef" refers to conflict, often violent).  Once his reckless ways finally pay off, his criminal associates betray him.  Though initially appearing to glorify his lifestyle, the final chorus ends like the archetypal gangsta's life: with a "bang".

#2 - It's relevant.

Seconds after Rakim is introduced as "the G-O-D", another voice proclaims "if you follow in his footsteps, you will become what he is".  This context frames "Holy Are You" as a blueprint for others, not just rhythmic braggadocio.  Known to profoundly move audiences, Rakim frames his unique skills in the recognition that everyone can catalyze such movement.  He holds up his music as a reflection of man's ability to improve his own situation.  Rakim's expression of that situation through rap was his ticket out of the destructive environment he was trapped in as a child.  "For those who find it hard to believe... / Why they call [him] the God Emcee"*, perhaps it's because when he boasts of his lyrical skills, he is celebrating man's ability to improve himself.

He exhorts us to "trace this style to the roots of Genesis", referring to when God "created the heavens and the earth" in the Book of Genesis.  Rakim's act of rapping parallels the Biblical God's creation of the universe because by interpreting his environment through rap, he has essentially transcended it.  Rakim forcefully empowers rap as a tool for shaping our expression, and thus our experience, of the world.  Later, he proposes that Africans are "probably descendents of the Holy Grail" to further highlight the difference between the world and how we perceive it.  Even in 2010, with all the science and history at our fingertips, Jesus Christ is commonly depicted as a white man with European features.  Through this line, Rakim is reaching out to urban black youth and exhorting them to think of themselves as divine in spite of the historically racist society they live in.  He emphasizes the value of positive self-perception because of its impactful relevance to our experience of the world.

#3 - It rocks.

Since the 80s, Rakim has been revered for his extensive sequences of rhymes that give the impression that he can go on forever.  To achieve this, he cultivates a distinctive mix of various types of rhyme.   The following excerpt from "Man Above" illustrates Rakim's mastery of poetic language:

It's so hard when they close doors
And when you looking like a so-called hip hoppa you get nada
Stereotyped, scarred for life stigmata
But still a kid's gotta get a dolla

The first line is a thorn line (a non-rhyming line within an otherwise rhyming work).  Rap songs usually rhyme, so we can expect that an un-rhymed line must contain important information or it wouldn't be there.  Here, the absence of rhyme emphasizes the desperation caused by unjust discrimination.  Rakim then hits you with the extended (working across more than 1 syllable), assonant rhymes (same vowel sounds but different consonants) of "hoppa"/"nada"/"stigmata"/"dolla".  Because "nada" is Spanish, these rhymes are also macaronic (rhyming words from different langauges).  The alliteration of "steretotyped"/"scarred"/"stigmata"/"still" makes the sequence that much smoother.

More than empty wordplay, packing in diverse rhymes into few lines enhances Rakim's rhetorical ability.  His "hip hoppa" appearance, along with his prior criminal record, comprises the "stigmata" that makes it difficult to get a job and improve his situation.  He compares these racial and cultural biases he faces with Jesus's crucifixion wounds.  Linking these words with "nada", a Spanish word, highlights the fact that these biases affect more than just African Americans.  And as the final rhyme of this sequence, "dolla" references both a driving force behind such discrimination and what is at stake for the stigmatized.

To further highlight Rakim's rich diversity of rhymes, I've culled more examples and sorted them by rhyme type.  For a glossary of different types of rhymes, click here.

Perfect/true rhyme:

• "I can show you how to emcee / Like I got a degree" (How to Emcee).
• "Like Revelations, I'm hoping my quotes reveal / The 7 spirits of God when I open the seal" (Holy Are You).  Rakim is referring to the Book of Revelations, which describes and repeatedly cites the 7 spirits of God.
• "You spend your childhood in the wild hood / You in debt for life" (Man Above).  This line also has identical rhyme (rhyming same word).  He is talking about how mistakes he made as a child continued to haunt him even after he supposedly paid his debt to society in prison.

Imperfect/half/slant/oblique rhyme:

• "You find your mind too far-fetched for it to fathom / I bring the darkness to the light and split the atom" (Holy Are You).  Rakim here connects his lyrical prowess to the Bibical God's creation of the world and the underlying force behind nuclear fission.
  

Assonant rhyme (Rakim does this a lot):

• "Love backwards here is evil but it's legal" (Man Above).  Rakim is playing with the pronunciation of love spelled backwards (evol).
• "I tell you who God is, you ignore me like most the prophets / Jesus, Solomon, Abraham, Moses, and Muhammed" (Holy Are You).  
  
• "They say don't let it make you, but that's how they rate you / And the more you've got, the more they hate you (that's okay too)" (Walk These Streets).  Here, he discusses the role of money in the "cities, hoods, and slums" where he performs.

Rich rhyme (using homonyms):

• "Kill 'em off with a word like euthanasia / Til it spread to the youth in Asia" (How to Emcee).  Rakim is connecting the potency of his lyrics to his international fame.   

Macaronic rhyme:

• "Since a bambino, cash made my path cross with evil" (Walk These Streets).  "Bambino" is Italian for "little boy". 
  

Leonine/medial rhyme (in middle and end of same line):

• "If the mic is your grind, then bitin's a crime / Especially if a ghostwriter's writing your rhymes" (Won't Be Long).  Here, Rakim emphasizes the importance of originality to professional rappers. These rhymes are also extended and assonant.  A "ghostwriter" is someone who writes lyrics for another rapper.
  

Initial/head rhyme (at the beginning of a line):

• "Mic-sick lyrics is ill, locked in the brain / Like Mike Vick sitting in jail, watching the game" (Won't Be Long).  He is describing the lyrics that filled his head during the 10 years between his last album and "The Seventh Seal".  In hip hop, "sick" and "ill" are both used to describe things that are extremely cool, original, and distinctive.  "Mic" and "Mike" are also rich rhymes.  "In the brain" and "-ing the game" are also extended, assonant rhymes.
  

• "Forever sick, like catching AIDS is /...My predicates last for pages / Every letter fit, trendsetter like fashion statements" (Won't Be Long).  Rakim is boasting of his lyrical abilities.  The underlined rhymes are also extended and assonant, as well as "last for pages" and "fashion statements".
  

*The emcee (or MC) is an elite class of rapper, one that is celebrated both for how and what he raps.  The term originated as an acronym for "Move the Crowd" or "Master of Ceremonies".