Artist: Rakim
Album:  The 18th Letter
Song:   Guess Who's Back

"Once again back is the incredible" --> Chuck D

Yeah, yeah
It's the return of the Wild Style fashionist
Smashin hits, make it hard to adapt to this
Put pizazz and jazz in this, and cash in this
Mastered this, flash this and make em clap to this
DJ's throw on cuts and obey the crowd
Just pump the volume up, and play it loud
Hip-Hop's embedded, before I said I wouldn't let it
But me and the microphone is still magnetic
Straight off the top, I knew I'd be forced to rock
Dancefloors just stop, the spot's scorchin hot
Hoping I open Rakim Allah seminars
Massage at the bar smokin ten dollar cigars
while I admire ?, with more vision than TV's
I find it easy catchin diabetes from fly sweeties
Sit back and wait to hear a slammin track
Rockin jams by popular demand, I'm back

	*chorus*
	I control the crowd, you know I hold it down
	When it drop you know it's jiggy when you hear the sound
	From town to town, until it's world reknowned
	And I rock New York City all year around

Check it out
It's on so you can swerve when it's heard in clubs
Thought patterns displayed on Persian rugs
Equations are drawn up in paisley form
Mic it stay warm, my flow is Evian
Deep as a Nautilus, you stay dipped in Ra style
from the shores of Long Island to Panama Canal
Intellect pitches new trends like a clothes designer
I'm in effect, quicker than medicines in China
Split the mic open fill it with somethin potent to go in
and take a toke then, mental planes start floatin
Hot science is smokin altitudes cause chokin
Product is hypnotic you're soakin and still smokin
Showin better scenes than grams of amphetamines
Plans to scheme, means I'll forever fiend
Long as the mic is loud and the volume is pumpin
I'ma move crowds to 2000

	*chorus*

Yo, my rhymes and lyrics, find spirits like a seance
Since fat Cray-ons, I write and display chaos
My plan is ?, the diagram know where the damage
I take advantage, until your crowd go bananas
What a rush I hear cuts and I lust to touch
Microphones get clutches by the illustrious
Word spread I inherited, many ways to say the unsaid
Born with three 7's in my head
In time no one can seem to blow your mind as far as this
To find you'll need philosophers and anthropologists
Astrologists, professors from your smartest colleges
with knowledge and scholarships, when Ra be droppin this
Some of the things I know, will be in your next Bible
When I die go bury me and my notebook in Cairo
with the great God from Egypt manifest was write rhymes
align with the stars, I come back to bless the mic

	*chorus* 2X

	"Once again, back is the incredible" --> Chuck D
Word up, Rakim Allah the Microphone Fiend is back, yaknahmean?
	"Rakim Allah" --> Rakim
Till death do us part
	"Once again, back is the incredible" --> Chuck D
It's on
	"Rakim Allah" --> Rakim

	*CD sample, *Ra sample in sequence to 3:50

	"Once again back is the incredible
	 The incredible, the incredible
	 The incredible...
	 Once again back is the incredible
	 Rhyme animal, the incredible..." --> Chuck D