“So anyway, Rakim showed up to the studio one day, and they had enlisted me to do the beats that day. And Paul used to make people these tapes of the original records [that could be used for samples]. So Rakim showed up with a cassette, and was like, ‘Yo, [let’s use] this right here.’ And I was like, ‘Oh shyt, this is that ‘Ghetto’ shyt that Paul let me hear one time.’
“So I looped it up off the tape right there. And Rakim was like, ‘Yo, I want the pauses in it. All the drops.’ So I sat there and messed with that loop. Back in the days, they had this shyt called the Publison. So I threw it in the Publison, and did all of this chopping and all of that, and put it together.
“Rakim told me the first line to that, he only had the first line. He was like, ‘Yo, I’ma set it off like this, Baby Pa.’ And he let me hear the first line, and that was it. The next time I heard it, it was finished. I don’t know where he recorded vocals, but they went to Cali to finish it and mix it.
“Eric B. and Rakim were professional, but I was coming on the hip-hop B-Boy tip, where everyone would come to one dude’s house and DJ. I wasn’t on the professional side, like, ‘Show me the contracts.’ I was just in there doing beats. I had no contractual obligations with Eric B., because that’s who had me in there. On the strength of Paul C, I was in the studio. It wasn’t like, ‘You’re going to get credited for this and that.’
