📍Wyandanch, NY 11798, USA
1968 – 1986“William Michael Griffin Jr. was born in January 1968 in Wyandanch, a small, largely Black hamlet in the middle of Long Island, about forty miles east of New York City, the youngest of five children. His mother, Cynthia, was a trained opera singer, and every one of the children played an instrument or sang. The great R&B singer Ruth Brown was a close friend of the family, whom he called his aunt. His first love was the saxophone. He played the baritone sax in the band at Wyandanch High School, and he loved Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane; he later said he couldn't play like Coltrane on a horn, but he could with a microphone. He was also a fine athlete and the quarterback of the high school football team, and he hoped to play professionally. Rap was all around him in the early 1980s, and as Kid Wizard, he took part in freestyle battles at school, some of which were recorded. At sixteen he joined the Nation of Gods and Earths and took the name Rakim Allah. In 1985 his friend Alvin Toney introduced him to a DJ from Queens, Eric B., who was looking for a rapper. Rakim chose music over football, and their single Eric B. Is President and album Paid in Full, in 1987, changed hip-hop, with complex, internal rhymes and a cool, measured delivery shaped by jazz. Many call him the greatest MC of all time, the God MC. Wyandanch remains proud of the saxophone-playing quarterback who changed the art of rhyming.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today