Giving us the business
Kalani Wilhelm
Feb 4, 2009
From subject matter to style, the business of hip-hop music has certainly changed since the days EPMD first went hard on the microphone.
Wearing their signature fisherman hats, oversized hoodies and the thick rope gold chains, Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith captivated the hip-hop world with a no-nonsense style that represented where they were from, who they were and what they were about. Hip-hop hardcore as can be.
Since their breakout debut album in 1988 Strictly Business, Sermon aka “The Green-Eyed Bandit” and Smith aka PMD (Parrish Making Dollars) have been a well-respected mainstay in the game well into the ’90s with albums Business As Usual, Business Never Personal and Out of Business.
The stream of EPMD classic songs, which includes bangers like “You Gots to Chill,” “Gold Digger,” “Rampage,” “Crossover,” “Headbanger” and “Richter Scale,” remained steady as the duo reached icon-like status while never going pop or mainstream.
Twenty years later and seven albums deep, the group from Brentwood, Long Island have the same attitude and remain as rough, rugged and raw as they claimed in their rhymes since the very beginning. Not once has the dynamic duo of rap switched their style.
In what some may call a watered-down industry, referred to as hip-pop by some purists, the newly released album We Mean Business, released on their own label EP Records, proves that the legendary partners in rhyme still got it.
Pipeline Cafe, 805 Pohukaina St., Fri 2/6, 10pm, $25–$65, 18+, [pipelinecafehawaii.com], 589-1999.
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