In a contemporary review for "The Washington Post", Mark Jenkins highlighted the single "Eric B. Is President" but was unimpressed by the rest of "Paid in Full": "Its beats are monotonous, and the attempts to take 'jazz and the quiet storm' and 'convert into hip-hop form' fall flat." Robert Christgau from "The Village Voice" said it has "four groundbreaking masterworks" in "I Ain't No Joke", "I Know You Got Soul", "Paid in Full", and "Eric B. Is President", but was less enthusiastic about the other six songs: "They're pure, innovative, in-your-face—no doubt. But they're also turntablism with spoken decoration, of small use to anyone who hasn't internalized the 'real' hip hop aesthetic." In the newspaper's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll, it was named the 27th best album of 1987.