CD Odyssey Disc 1817: EPMD

I was planning to finish listening to this next record on a recent business trip, but the plane turned out to be rather loud (and I sat beside the engine) so had to finish things up when I got home. A full listen now under my belt, let’s get to it with another return to early nineties rap/hip hop.

Disc 1817 is…Business as Usual

Artist: EPMD

Year of Release: 1990

What’s up with the Cover? EPMD step into an alley full of cops, who look armed to the teeth with guns, dogs, and bad intentions.

How will our intrepid duo fare with only their fisherman hats to protect them? Well, that and the greatest most powerful weapon humans ever invented – words.

How I Came To Know It: Originally, I knew this band through my friend Spence but this album was just me out exploring their discography and seeing what I liked.

How It Stacks Up: I have three EPMD albums. They are all great, but one has to be last and this is it. Or, put more positively, in third place.

Ratings: 4 stars

The late eighties and early nineties are called rap’s golden age for a reason – it was a time of unparallelled creativity as artists were free to explore samples, concepts and beats as they discovered and defined a new musical landscape. There are plenty of fine hip hop acts around today (P.O.S., Run the Jewels, Dessa, Doechii) but 1990 had great acts emerging by the bucket(hat) load.

Enter EPMD’s third record, “Business as Usual,” which is the third of three definitely great records by emcees Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith. Sermon and Smith have the three ingredients needed for emcee greatness: 1) individual talent 2) vocal styles that are different but complementary and 3) dope beats. As ever Parrish provides the furious front-end controlled aggression chop, and Sermon counters with a chill bean-bag feel of a rap; comfy, cool and chill as hell.

While there are places on “Business as Usual” that are a bit overdone (and a suspicious amount of “jazz” sounds), on the whole these key ingredients are intact and well. The boys are back for a third time, and cool as ever.

Things get off to a great start with “I’m Mad” and a sampled high piano key (source – not to be revealed, yo) that gives a frantic emotional quality to the song, as we are treated to emcees that aren’t just going to dismantle you with rhymes, but that are going to do it with a frenetic aggression.

The duo know artfully flip between this front-of-beat attack style with a laid back jazz feel on “Hardcore” that rides the rhymes at the back end like a biker on a Harley Fat Boy going through a school zone; taking things slow so everyone can hear how cool things sound. Also for safety – no reason to risk injuring a kid with a rushed rhyme, people!

The album’s standout is “Rampage” which has the funkiest beats on the record, and an angry “I out rap you” ethos. Not content with the talents of EPMD, “Rampage” throws in a whole stanza courtesy of LL Cool J, channeling a “Jinglin’ Baby” vibe but even…LL cooler. Best Cool J moment:

“The ripper, the master, the overlordian
Playing MCs like an old accordion”

I don’t know if I’d risk ‘overlordian’ in a Scrabble game, but conversion of a basic title that connotes authority earned to a deeper “born with it” quality (overlord – overlordian) all to set up a clever bit of tempo and rhyme is sneaky smart stuff. My English degree approves.

As with previous records, EPMD songs feature a fairly significant number of references to the ‘bozak’, either from the perspective of “get off my bozak” or the aggressive grabbing of one’s own bozak. I don’t know another rap act that is as ‘bozak’ heavy as EPMD but it all feels very natural in their…er…hands.

My only minor criticism of “Business as Usual” is that it fades a little bit near the end, with the best of the best at the front of the record. This created a bit of trailing off of my enthusiasm as I went, but not so much to deny this golden age masterpiece it’s well-earned four stars.

Best tracks: I’m Mad, Rampage, Manslaughter, Give the People, Brothers on My Jock

CD Odyssey Disc 1816: Billy Strings

For the third time in four reviews we get an album from 2024. Why is this happening, you ask? We’ve covered this, people. It’s random.

Disc 1816 is…Highway Prayers

Artist: Billy Strings

Year of Release: 2024

What’s up with the Cover? The front end of a 1972 Chevelle SS, in all its glory. Well, in most of its glory – someone has modified the SS to read “BS” presumably to match Billy Strings’ initials and not the more commonly seen abbreviation.

As for the Chevelle, I am a devoted fan of the muscle car, and there are not many cars nicer than this one. First generation Camaros are the best, for sure. After that there are plenty of great muscle cars vying for second place. These early seventies Chevelles are in the conversation.

How I Came To Know It: My friend Brennan has been on me for years to give Billy Strings a chance, and while I’ve dabbled I’ve never dived in. However, this record features that Chevelle on the cover which is the sign of a greater power at work (in this case, an inner sleeve picture revealing there is a rare 502 big block under the hood). I don’t mess with the fates; I bought the record.

How It Stacks Up: Billy Strings appears on a guest on a couple of my albums (Molly Tuttle, Sierra Ferrell) but this is my only studio album of his, so it can’t stack up.

Ratings: 4 stars

Rare is the double album that can’t be whittled down to a single, and while “Highway Prayers” makes an honest race of it, it can’t quite propel itself to justifying all those damned songs. There are a ton of amazing tunes on “Highway Prayers” but could I have cut it from 20 to 14 and made a better record? Reader, I could.

That’s not a diss, mind you. Billy Strings is a prolific songwriter, and he takes the extra space and time afforded through his excess and makes good use of it. While this album at its core is bluegrass, Strings works the extra content to branch out into various forms of country and folk, and even a little indie stoner action to show us he’s down with trends popular all the way from two hundred years ago to yesterday.

Things get started in a very traditional way with a couple of classic bluegrass numbers in “Leanin’ On a Travellin’ Song” and “In the Clear”. “In the Clear” is particularly appealing, not just because of the musicianship (more on that in a moment) but also because the songs have a lot to say. It is a song that reminds us that no matter how many horses you may have under the hood, it can still sometimes get confusing about where the hell you’re going. The opening two stanzas sum it up:

“Well, here I am pulled over now
Just crying on the shoulder
Down the road that I've been driving on for days
So I aim my moral compass
But it's spinning like a wheel
And you could take that many different ways

“I've had days as black as nighttime
And nights that lasted years
I spent a thousand hours on my knees
Broke down and started praying
But I was pleading with the wind
Just to never feel the difference in the breeze”

For anyone who has ever wondered what the hell the point of it all is, or even why they’re even doing what they’re doing, Billy wrote this song for you. You can drive, or you can pray or you just sit confused and spin that internal compass but some days the answers just aren’t gonna come.

It is hard to get too upset about all the uncertainty when you have musicians as solid as you’ll encounter on “Highway Prayers”. Strings has many fine friends in the bluegrass community and he brings them all to show their stuff on this record. Bluegrass is a great genre in that everyone gets their solo, which is very egalitarian and also easy on the ears when played well.

Strings himself is famously talented on the guitar, and he earned that fame. Dude can wail in a way that few can even imagine, and some of the pickin’ he delivers here hits the very top right-hand edge of a graph measuring “too clever by half” against “still sounds great”. This can also be Strings’ downfall. Very easy to listen to, but some solos have lengths that are better suited to live-only moments. Too much of a good thing is true even at this ridiculously high level of talent.

For the most part I forgive this excess (and even liked it half the time), and Strings does a good job of juxtaposing all that technical mastery with some down-home storytelling. It is in these moments that I liked him best, covering tales of hardship (“Seven Weeks in County”), bad relationships (“Don’t Be Callin’ Me (at 4.a.m.)” and dark and dangerous hints of jealous vengeance (“My Alice”).  The way “My Alice” focuses on someone watching your girl in a way you don’t appreciate had me thinking of the voyeuristic Nick Cave song “Watching Alice”. Did the one inspire the other? I have no idea; your mind starts playing tricks on you after there’s few too many songs crammed in there.

There are a couple of grade A tunes about smokin’ grass (“Catch and Release” and “Morbud4me” that give the album a healthy dose of levity. The former’s a song about a lucky encounter with a forgiving state trooper, and the latter about very little more than the joy of getting stoned. “Morbud4me” doesn’t break any new ground lyrically, but the decision to create rhythm section by looping the sound of flicking a lighter with the burble of a water pipe is clever and surprisingly musical.

There is a lot of great stuff on “Highway Prayers” and with six fewer songs, this could’ve cracked the Top 10 list for 2024. As it is, it is a record chock full of just enough good stuff that you don’t mind a little bit of inoffensive filler, which even when too long is still played with gusto and deep wells of talent.

Best tracks: In the Clear, Seven Weeks in County, Don’t Be Callin’ Me (at 4 a.m.),  Catch and Release, Be Your Man, My Alice, Morbud4me, The Beginning of the End, Richard Petty