Classic Music: Antlife's Top 25 Hip Hop Albums of All-Time #10 (EPMD "Business as Usual") (1990)

Duckets..

I should probably start off by sayin’ that EPMD is one of my favorite two groups of all-time! Their first 4 albums were flawless to me, and I could easily play them all back to back without skippin’ a single track. They really did embody everything that was incredibly dope about Hip Hop, and they seriously raised my standard for what to expect from a classic album. Not many artists or groups can have 4 classic albums in a row. That’s not up for debate either. EPMD’s first 4 albums are classics! They came around during a time when I was first starting to discover how much I loved Hip Hop, as a kid. So what I gravitated to first, were the beats. And Erick Sermon is easily one of Hip Hop’s best producers of all-time. So his tracks for the group were not necessarily sampling the most rare records in the world, but the way his beats knocked, was just crazy! EPMD had the best bass lines in the game back then! And I was too young to even know what a bass line was. 

With so many dope albums, it’s tough to single out just one. But Business as Usual is my favorite EPMD album for a few reasons. The first one being that, this is where I heard Redman for the first time. He was on the tracks “Hardcore” and “Brothers on my Jock”. I knew right away that he was a special MC, and he’d end up being my favorite for many years after this album dropped. This album also had “Rampage” which had LL on it. And his verse on that track might be his dopest ever! And we all know he’s got tons of classic verses. This release showed another side of the group, that I don’t think we saw on the first couple of albums, their sense of humor. They experimented with flows and beats way more than before, like on “Rap is Outta Control”, or even on “I’m Mad”. They even touched on chicks on the original version of “Gold Digger”, which Kanye would revamp 15 years later. 

There were just so many classic cuts on this album. They seriously made sure to keep the quality sky-high on this one, and I think it’s shown in how timeless this joint really is. Since then, so many artists have sampled beats from this one, there’s been tons of remakes of the songs, etc. We often forget how influential Erick and Parrish really were. But if you just dig back into those old classics, you’ll see how fortunate we were back then, to have been in a generation of kids, lucky enough to have grown up with this kind of music readily available to us. If this album isn’t in your collection already, you’re playin’ yourself and need to change that immediately.

Respect..

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