Rakim's definitive moment of the noughties

I refer not to his verse on The Watcher 2 or the Ayatollah produced banger A Cold Feeling from 2001, but the viral commercial he did for the now sadly defunct GoldTeethUSA.com site back in 2004 where his mouth joined his third eye in shining like jewellery. The video split hip hop purists into 2 distinct camps of precious souls, consisting of those who couldn't watch it "out of respect for the God M.C" and those who watched it through their fingers before comparing it to a hostage video where middle eastern terrorists had a spotlight shining into the R's face and a glock pointed against the temple of his wifey offscreen, but here at The Martorialist we interpreted the clip in an entirely different light altogether with Rakim Allah just helping a fellow Godbody out by getting in front of the camera for his mate Dave's grillz website after they'd spent a night down the pub relaxing with Pep together and making himself a little much-needed loot after his Aftermath deal went belly up :

"Tell 'em Rakim sent you, man. They ain't gonna give you no discount, but what they gonna do, they gonna give you the right joints, you heard me?"



Cheap gold-fronts have been known to cause dangerous dental problems requiring surgery and gingivitis so mean you'll be bleeding burgundy, so it's a pity there was no recreated, reincarnated, updated Grillz for Dummies follow-up video where the R explained 'fronts hygeine/etiquette for GoldTeethUSA's tens of customers. Brothers tried and others died to get the formula, but don't sweat the technique because Baby came through to teach the chil'ren last year :

"You gotta get that shit cleaned, dog, if you don't, you fucked. All them n*ggas....man. Ask them n*ggas in Texas how they mouths all fucked up, fuckin' with that Johnny's shit got them n*ggas mouths all fucked up. If you playin' with yo' mouth, you gotta go to the proper dentist, you gotta go where that shit sanitized right, you gotta just do that shit right, dog.."



BONUS BEATS :

Eric B. & Rakim - Hypnotic (1990?)



There's a reason why this and Everything's Cool are by far the best of all Rakim's unreleased tracks, and it's because they both hail from the Eric B. & Rakim era. The latter was snipped from Don't Sweat The Technique due to sample clearance, and the story goes that Hypnotic was recorded for Let The Rhythm Hit 'Em by Large Professor but ended up on Eric B's cutting room floor along with the fabled bars from the title track due to the "I don't sniff no 'caine/Kane to get raw" line since Rakim and Big Daddy Kane had squashed their lingering beef after sending subliminals at each other on Set It Off and Microphone Fiend previously. It all seems so quaint when you consider this was around the same period when LL & Kool Moe Dee and Ice Cube & N.W.A were trading fairly explicit dis tracks, and it's a pity their petty squabbling didn't carry over to 1992 because Rakim could've got some major zings in at Kane's expense for keeping his leopard-skin undies on when he was romping with Madonna and Naomi Campbell in Madonna's SEX book. Bet he's the only goon nucca in them tiny pants.