Parliament is the order of this song as our duo upscale the excerpt to a gojazillion! Once again, EPMD allow fellow Hit Squadians Kevin Madison and Reggie Noble to completely outclass them on record, which they do as Solo brings the Knick Knack Patty Wack steez (without spelling shit, thank the Almighty) while Redman completely incinerates the memory of his Hardcore verse with a contribution that deservedly got him his first Source Hip Hop Quotable, so if people were checking for him before, they were rioting in anticipation of his debut, now.
Ruff Ryders' Ryde Or Die? Thank this song. The DOC and Rakim samples sweeten the deal that much more. EPMD, fucking legends that they are, craft a majestic horn sample woven through an ingeniously slowed-down Foreigner excerpt that makes their patented BNB sound like it was delivered by two giants towering sky high over New York. Instead, it’s merely a hilarious distraction that you enjoy along with the rest of the track. One thing though, Parish: What were you on when you performed the eponymous hook?! The actual verses prevent said hook from developing into a full-blown annoyance that ruins the overall song. Trust this pair to turn a four-second excerpt of a soulful Barbara Mason ballad into a hardcore Jeep-rattler. This album cut game is hard to pull off, yet these two make it seem effortless. This was awesome.Īside from the useless skit at the beginning, E& P successfully recreate the feel of their classic album cut Manslaughter, with their beat based on a melodic Bobby Womack loop.
Many fans of these two claim this album as their very best, and you're here to contest the validity of that claim.īusiness Never Personal, boy/girl (pick one):Ī prominent Earth, Wind & Fire loop laced with that James Brown guitar riff helps EPMD top the opening track of their last album, as this braggadocious display of theirs deserves all the light shed on it. Amazingly, Business Never Personal (Almighty God, does that title piss me off now) scored on all fronts, with the album achieving the gold plaque in a mere two months and thereby becoming the fastest-selling EPMD album. The surpise sleeper hit Dead Serious along with Time's Up, the second critically acclaimed K-Solo album in a row, prepped Erick "Microphone Wrecka" Sermon and Parish "Microphone Doctor" Smith for launch into a world currently occupied by Sean Comby Combs & them, except that EPMD feel like a much more legitimate fit for that world, don'cha think? Anyway, our duo felt that it was high time they progressed into their fourth opus and second release under the house that the fuckwads built, Def Jam, as they added the finishing touches on what would become the debut album of the lone remaining Hit Squadian, one Reggie Noble aka DJ Kut Killa bka the mighty Redman.īy now, the minimum expectation for an EPMD album was at least five hundred thousand shipped units and a mountain of critical acclaim praising the game-changing nature of said release. Shedding light away from the negativity for a bit, EPMD were riding high as all the chips of the Hit Squad's success continued to stack in their favor. A considerable heap of critical acclaim for the movement's largely-unified sound of grimy funk beats added with a colorful variety of lyrical styles was all the more reason for the Hit Squad to become the blueprint for the collective that would definitively take their place within the annals of hip hop history: The Wu-Tang Clan. To understand the magnitude of hip hop's loss, the achievements of said Hit Squad must be reflected upon: 3 gold albums, 1 platinum album and a gang of timeless hits by them and fellow Squadians K-Solo & Das EFX. The implications of this incident would lead the entire Hit Squad movement, by then tearing emphatically through the whole hip hop industry, to a deafening halt and, more importantly, put a loathesome strain on a lifelong friendship. The assailants clamied to the police that Parish's EPMD partner Erick Sermon paid them to do so. At the end of 1991, the house of one Parish Smith of EPMD was robbed.