EPMD – Business As Usual (1990 Def Jam recordings)
After going gold with their debut and sophomore albums EPMD still hadn’t made bank thanks to some typical financial mismanagement and exploitation by those good people over at Sleeping Bag Records, but with their contracts ripped up, and the ink barely dry on a new deal at Def Jam, they came out with another typically classic album: Business as Usual. As the name suggests they wanted to reassure their fans that nothing had changed and they were still the funkified rap pioneers they knew and loved, except for one thing – they were now ‘bigger and deffer’.
By 1990 the sound of hip hop was noticeably maturing and this album was another quantum leap in terms of production, with EPMD illustrating the move away from the simple ‘two turntables and a drum machine’ style to making themselves at home in a modern studio. The production values are elevated on this album; the bass lines are crisper and louder, the drums are tougher, the mastering adds to the clarity and the samples drop like anvils, even the scratches are getting more tech.
Rather than rely on one clever sample looped over a programmed beat, Erick and Parish cut and pasted a plethora of classic soul and funk soundbites over sampled and filtered drum loops. You just have to listen to the hook on my favourite track ‘Manslaughter’ and try to decipher how many different samples are being used to see what I mean. The left and right panning on the James Brown intro to Gold Digger is yet another sign of the improved technology that the Def Jam studios offered to the rap duo.
The soundscapes are also noticeably darker as illustrated by the fact that both ‘Brothers on my Jock’ and ‘Underground’ were later reworked into moody New York mid-90s classics by Wu Tang and Black Moon respectively. The flow patterns are perhaps the only thing that remained true to their two previous installments, but any criticisms of the duo’s rap style can be offset by the shrewd choice of a then unknown youngster from Newark. No, it wasn’t Shaq! It was Redman of course, and his unique style drags the two tracks he is featured on into firmly into the 90s style that we would become so accustomed to over the next few years.
Trivia
First album on Def Jam
First official appearance by Redman
Singles
Gold Digger
Rampage
Give the People
Slang dictionary
Fly, Wack, Jock, Bozack, Phat, Jam, Props, Lampin, (Mom/Pop) Dukes, Daddy mack, Booty
90s Guy says
I was about 13 when I first heard this album as it didn’t make it into my world until 1991/2 when I lent it off my best mates older brother after he called me a ‘bozack’ and I still don’t think I worked out what ‘Mr Bozack’ was until about a year later. A bit like the quickening in ‘Highlander’ lots of things seemed to make sense after I realised these guys were talking about their dicks. In fact all hip hop of the time was a kind of code that you didn’t quite understand but were desperate to decode.
Sometimes this was for slang or colloquial reasons but often for transatlantic reasons – we weren’t aware of some of the people Rappers were referencing (Tony Danza, Karl Malone, Urkel, Vanessa Del Rio weren’t exactly household names in the UK), but that also made you lot cooler if you could dig it. Its hard to imagine nowadays people not understanding hip hop slang and not being exposed to the worldwide dominance of American pop culture but Hip Hop was still underground music back in the nine oh.
90s Guy Favourites
Manslaughter
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Brothers on my jock
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Underground
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Funky piano
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Rampage, Give the people
Review
Rap Reviews back to the lab
Link
Listen for yourself
On the DL
Popularity: 21% [?]
Edited: September 4th, 2008
