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
