EPMD: Strictly Business (2LP) [PRIORITY]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set spreads the album's fat, funky loops over four sides. Strictly Business went to No. 1 on the R&B/Hip Hop albums chart, turned gold within four months and earned five mics from The Source.

This edition

• 2LP set

About the album

The name stood for Erick and Parrish Making Dollars, and from the first bars of the title track it's clear the business plan was sound. Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith, two friends from Brentwood, Long Island, wrote and produced every track themselves, with DJ K La Boss on the cuts. No guest rappers, no outside producers, just two laid-back voices trading lines over enormous funk samples.

"Strictly Business" builds itself on Eric Clapton's "I Shot the Sheriff," "You Gots to Chill" rides a Zapp groove into the history books, and "It's My Thing" and "Because I'm Housin'" keep the party rolling. "You're a Customer" ends on a drum break that lived a second life, flipped for Mario Winans and P. Diddy's "I Don't Wanna Know" and again for Metro Boomin, The Weeknd and 21 Savage's "Creepin'."

Rolling Stone put it on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and Brian Coleman's book Check the Technique gives it the full track-by-track treatment. Few debut albums name their ambitions so plainly, and fewer still turn out to be quite this good at bookkeeping.

Also at Kops: more EPMD on vinyl · browse Hip Hop / R&B

Tracklist

Listen

On Fresh / Priority (cat# B0026619-01), a reissue of the 1988 album.