EPMD

Essential Albums

  • Unfinished Business
    Unfinished Business
    Unfinished Business

    The second album from EPMD, 1989’s Unfinished Business, picks up right where the duo’s landmark 1988 debut left off, featuring inventive samples and plenty of slow-flowing braggadocio from one of the funkiest duos in rap history. But this time around, Long Island’s Erick Sermon and Parrish “PMD” Smith were able to back up their boasts: “Dropped the album Strictly Business and you thought we would fold,” Smith raps. “Thirty days later, the LP went gold.” Newly minted rap stars at the age of 19, Sermon and Smith were once again coming for necks with a rugged-but-smooth confidence. The album’s lead single, “So Wat Cha Sayin’,” would become a staple on Yo! MTV Raps (and, along the way, introduce millions of listeners to the slang term “bozack”). The song’s ballistic turntable solos came courtesy of the virtuosic DJ Scratch, who’d been introduced to the group by Run-D.M.C.’s Jam Master Jay, and who’d remain an integral part of EPMD throughout its 1990s run, lending heroic fervor to songs like “The Big Payback.” The rest of Unfinished Business is as reliably funky as ever. The second installment of the duo’s ongoing “Jane” series finds Smith once again ending up in the bedroom with the saga’s antagonist. “Knick Knack Patty Wack” introduces the formidable Long Island protégé K-Solo, while “Please Listen to My Demo” details the group members’ struggles when they were unsigned dreamers only two years earlier. And the anti drunk-driving story “You Had Too Much to Drink” marks EPMD’s first and only foray into Run-D.M.C.-esque rap-rock. Like its predecessor, Unfinished Business was a commercial and critical hit—but, more importantly, the album reverberated through hip-hop throughout the 1990s and beyond. Tha Dogg Pound would cover “Knick Knack Patty Wack” in 1997, while Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek would release a stylish, inventive version of “So Wat Cha Sayin’” in 2001. Rapper Evidence of Dilated Peoples even redubbed himself “Mr. Slow Flow,” inspired by a line in the Unfinished Business track “Strictly Snappin’ Necks.” Not long after the album’s release, EPMD would make the leap to Def Jam—the latest step in what would become one of the most remarkable streaks from rap’s golden age.

  • Strictly Business
    Strictly Business
    Strictly Business

    A seminal moment from hip-hop’s game-changing year, EPMD’s 1988 debut Strictly Business set new standards in funky beatwork and cold-steel rhyming. Released at a time when artists like Public Enemy and Big Daddy Kane were pushing the limits of speed and chaos, EPMD—a Long Island duo made up of Erick Sermon and Parrish “PMD” Smith—took a slower, more methodical approach, one that leaned into the hard, mid-tempo funk of Zapp, Kool & the Gang, and Rick James. EPMD didn’t shy away from traditional hip-hop boasts (“To the average MC I’m known as the Terminator/Funky beatmaker, new jack exterminator” goes one PMD line), but the duo’s bravado was tempered by effortless, unflappable cool. Let LL Cool J and Run-D.M.C. take on their competitors with verbal dynamite; EPMD was going to claim victory with a pair of funky silencers. Sermon was still in high school when the duo began shopping around its two-song demo, one that landed EPMD a spot at Sleeping Bag Records, the label that released its first single: “It’s My Thing,” an irresistible shot of slow-flowing molasses funk that hit shelves in 1987—and was immediately embraced by tastemaking New York DJ Red Alert. The track featured a slightly out-of-joint loop of the classic breakbeat “7 Minutes of Funk” by The Whole Darn Family (Sermon would later claim the song’s loose, imperfect feel would influence Jay-Z’s 1996 debut Reasonable Doubt). Meanwhile, the single’s B-side, “You’re a Customer,” was partially informed by Parrish’s multicultural experiences in the Boy Scouts and at college, and mined its grooves and textures from rock acts like the Steve Miller Band and ZZ Top. Both tracks appear on the self-produced Strictly Business, the album that would firmly establish EPMD’s bona fides. Its monster first single, “You Gots to Chill”—built off a Zapp cassette they’d heard being played by Smith’s father—was featured in the very first episode of Yo! MTV Raps. The follow-up single, “Strictly Business,” makes funky work of an Eric Clapton sample, while “The Steve Martin” was created for EPMD’s dancer Stezo (who’d soon have a formidable rap career of his own). And the album’s closing track, the storytelling rap “Jane,” would begin a saga that would follow the group for years—an origin story for a franchise that would spawn no fewer than six sequels. The success of Strictly Business helped Sermon and Smith launch the collective known as the Hit Squad, which would come to dominate the 1990s, featuring such acts as K-Solo, Das EFX, Redman, and Keith Murray. And the album would influence the sound of pop and hip-hop for years to come: The drums from “You’re a Customer” would be repurposed for such crucial singles as Mario Winans’ “I Don’t Wanna Know” and Gang Starr’s “Mass Appeal,” while Sermon’s opening line to “You Gots to Chill”—“Relax your mind, let your conscience be free/And get down to the sounds of EPMD”—would be tweaked and interpolated by an entire generation’s worth of rappers and DJs. An epochal moment for New York rap, Strictly Business stands as one of the most essential hip-hop albums of the 1980s.

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About EPMD

The acronym EPMD stood for "Erick and Parrish Making Dollars," but the Long Island duo’s accomplishments go far beyond their bank accounts. They released some of the best hip-hop of the '80s and '90s, and are one of the most sampled acts in the genre’s history. Rapper-producer Erick Sermon and MC Parrish Smith sampled funk and rock records to craft laidback head-nodders, spitting rhymes that were fun, street-smart, and packed with unmistakable chemistry. Each of their albums cleverly used the word "business" in its title—the best were Strictly Business, Unfinished Business, and Business Never Personal—and each was full of party starters that rap fans loved and admired. It's no wonder that artists from OutKast to Snoop and Dr. Dre to the Weeknd have sampled their work. EPMD may not get enough credit in the press, but hip-hop would never be the same without them.

ORIGIN
Long Island, NY, United States
FORMED
1986
GENRE
Hip-Hop/Rap

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