In 2003, "Rolling Stone" listed "Paid in Full" at number 228 on "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list. calling it "Ice-grilled, laid-back, diamond-sharp: Rakim is a front-runner in the race for Best Rapper Ever, and this album is a big reason why." Similarly, "Blender" magazine included the album in its "500 CDs You Must Own Before You Die". "Time" magazine listed it as one of the eighteen albums of the 1980s in its "All-TIME 100" albums; editor Alan Light acknowledged the record changed the "sound, flow, and potential" of hip hop and that if Rakim is "the greatest MC of all time, as many argue, this album is the evidence". Jess Harvell of "Pitchfork" complimented Rakim for an "endless display of pure skill" and described the album as "laidback and funky", but believed it contained "too much filler to get a free 'classic' pass". "Pitchfork" placed "Paid in Full" at number fifty-two in its "Top 100 Albums of the 1980s"; editor Sam Chennault wrote that Rakim inspired a generation of MCs and "defined what it meant to be a hip-hop lyricist". By 2018, at which point "Pitchfork" had substantially altered their list of the top albums of the 1980s, "Paid in Full" was moved to number eleven and called ″a crowning achievement of hip-hop’s first golden age″ and one of the genre's ″glittering Rosetta Stones″. Slant Magazine listed the album at #32 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s" saying "For his part, Rakim didn't need to rely on macho jargon and trite gangsterisms for his self-aggrandizing sermons; he would simply reel off line after line of spellbinding wordplay, influencing an entire decade of tongue-twisting MCs in the process."