Happy 30th Anniversary to EPMD’s fourth studio album Business Never Personal, originally released July 28, 1992.
In early 1993, during my senior year of high school, a friend of mine told me about an argument she had with her long-distance boyfriend. She said she had poured her heart out to him over the phone about the various things that 17-year-old girls went through at the time, and she was angry because it didn’t seem like he was paying attention. When she told him so, he responded with something to the effect of, “EPMD just broke up and I’m really upset.” Now, because I was her friend, I said something like, “Wow, I’m sorry.” But truth be told, I absolutely understood that guy’s pain.
Hip-Hop music died for the first time when EPMD broke up. If I’m being honest with myself, it hasn’t been nearly as fun since. Hip-Hop was rarely better than when Erick “E Double” Sermon and Parrish “PMD” Smith were together on a track, passing the mic back and forth with effortless dexterity, ripping a hardcore funk track. Hearing their DJ, George “DJ Scratch” Spivey, cut it up on the wheels of steel was pure hip-hop nirvana.
I can’t remember when or how I first heard about their break-up. The internet was barely a thing in early 1993, so I imagine I might have heard something on Bay Area radio station KMEL’s “Wake Up Show” or possibly read about it in the paper. I didn’t even find out the details of why it supposedly happened until a few months later, when I read about it in The Source. I just knew that it had really bummed me out. It had barely been six months since the duo had released their classic fourth album Business Never Personal. They had been in the midst of a run of legendary proportion, and now I had to face the reality that it was over. Man, did it suck.
EPMD wasn’t the first hip-hop crew to face a rift during the early ’90s era. Just months before, 3rd Bass had split on less than amicable terms. Around the same time, it came out that Willie D had left the Geto Boys. But EPMD’s break-up just felt so much worse. They were one of those rare duos for which it was all but impossible to picture one emcee rhyming on a track without the other. Hailing from Brentwood, Long Island, Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith had a chemistry on the mic that was hard to duplicate or fake, owing in no small part to the fact that they’d been friends since junior high and rapping together since high school.
Though Rakim may have introduced the world of hip-hop to the slow flow, EPMD were fine practitioners of the style as well, with Smith assaulting the mic with his sinister yet aggressive rhyming style, while Sermon’s heavy delivery and cadence was drenched with his thick lisp. Yet their styles meshed perfectly. Through their first four albums, they were inseparable on the mic; none of those albums featured a solo cut by either emcee. The idea that they were parting ways seemed absolutely ludicrous.
Furthermore, the split was so unseemly. There was talk that Smith was withholding money from Sermon. There was speculation that Sermon had sent masked and armed goons to Smith’s house in response. There were rumors that Sermon and Smith weren’t on speaking terms as they travelled across the country on their tour to support Business Never Personal (a tour I went to with my younger brother and a high school buddy the previous fall at Oakland’s Henry J. Kaiser Center). It seemed like such an ignominious end to what was the greatest hip-hop duo of all time.
Released 30 years ago, Business Never Personal was the unanticipated final chapter in a legendary four-album run between 1988 and 1992. It appeared that by the summer, 1992 was shaping up to be the year of the newly minted Hit Squad crew. Das EFX had changed the game in early spring with Dead Serious (1992), K-Solo had released a dope sophomore album in Time’s Up, and now EPMD, the ringleaders of the collective, unleashed Business Never Personal, a rugged and rough album that showcased the group firing on all cylinders.
Personally, Business Never Personal was not only my most anticipated album of the Summer of 1992, but also one of my most anticipated albums to that date, rivaled only by Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet (1990) and Ice Cube’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted (1990). After signing with Def Jam, the Long Island duo had “leveled up” with Business As Usual, and I was further expecting great things for their follow-up. Business Never Personal might not have topped their previous endeavor, but it showed that the group was firmly in their groove and ready to expand their grasp.
EPMD had always excelled at starting off their albums charging out of the gate, and here they succeed again with “Boon Dox.” Sermon and Smith attack the raucous track, punctuated by crispy drums and war chant-like yells from Earth, Wind & Fire’s “I Can Feel It in My Bones.” DJ Scratch adds his flurry of cuts, scratching vocals from the Commodores’ “Assembly Line.”
The duo doesn’t let up on the gas with the combination of “Nobody’s Safe Chump” and “Can’t Hear Nothing But the Music,” a pair of severely underrated tracks. Like many great EPMD recordings, the beats and lyrics strike the right balance between soulful and rugged. PMD radiates almost intimidating authority on “Nobody’s Safe…,” rapping, “It's the hardcore rap music that make your ears ring / Droids of funk, produce a song to make my fans sing / Singing, swinging, hum along, thump my rap song / I bet I get wreck on a DL, then the P’s gone.”
Eventually the two slow down the tempo of the tracks but continue with their lyrical aggression. “Chill” features stellar production from the duo, as they loop the intro synthesizers from Foreigner’s “Street Thunder” instrumental but slow them down to a molasses-like pace (ostensibly by sampling the 45 rpm of the song playing at 33 1/3 rpm). It makes the track sound like a theme song for an unproduced hip-hop sci-fi flick. Again, both members of the group are in full attack mode. While Sermon raps that “I’m the original, my style’s deformed / So it can sound crazy ill when I perform,” Smith proclaims, “Back up, boy, move easy with the hand motion / Don't even blink kid, or Imma start smoking.”
The album’s first single was “Crossover” and there’s a bit of obvious irony that a song dedicated to warning emcees comprising their principles in order to sell out was the group’s most commercially successful song. Even though the beat for the song, which samples Roger Troutman’s “You Should Be Mine,” is probably the most commercially palatable track that EPMD had recorded to that point, the duo doesn’t dumb down their lyrics, as they implore rappers to stay true to their spirits and eschew sacrificing integrity for fame.
EPMD does an effective job at showcasing the lyrical talents of all of the members of the crew on Business Never Personal. Krazy Drayz and Skoob of Das EFX join Sermon and Smith on “Cumin’ At Cha,” a low-key endeavor with all four emcees rapping over a stripped-down drum track and muted bassline. However, “Head Banger” remains the album’s best track, and on the shortlist of the strongest hip-hop posse cuts of all time. The boisterous and chaotic track, with its piercing keys and bird-like whistles, helps make it one of the all-time great “get hype” songs.
Lyrically, Sermon, Smith, K-Solo, and Redman all contribute exceptional verses. Smith leads off, warning enemies to “get a grip and don't slip or catch a clip / From the infrared aimed at your head as I blast my target / The Bozack, I rip up flows that / Make an MC stop and chill and say he’s all that!” Meanwhile, Sermon professes to be “A real Damian, amen, possessed by the devil / You dig the rhythm, and I’ll play the running rebel!” and K-Solo promises to execute doubters with his digital trigger finger.
Redman finishes up the track with not only one of the best verses of his career, but one of the best verses in hip-hop history. He flows effortlessly with lines like, “Remember Redman? Last album I was ‘Hardcore’ / Now I’m back to tear the frame out your asscrack / ’Cause I get wreck with the tec, with the blunt or Möet / And what you see is what you get, and what you're getting is your ass kicked, n%#&a / Hit you with the funkdafied figure / Like A-Plus funk, funk times stuffed in your back trunk, punk!” It’s an absolute star-making performance that primed the audience for his forthcoming debut solo album (1992’s Whut? Thee Album) and set the stage for one of the great hip-hop solo careers.
Perhaps EPMD subconsciously knew the end of their reign was nigh when they recorded “Who Killed Jane?” as seemingly the final installment of their “Jane” saga. All of EPMD’s previous three albums featured a “Jane” themed track, with Smith describing his various fictitious misadventures with the groupie-turned-stalker of the same name. “Who Killed Jane?” is the weakest installment of the series up to that point, as Smith describes being framed by crooked cops for Jane’s murder. The incredibly dope beat, built around a sample of Curtis Mayfield’s “Stone Junkie,” can’t mask the weak narrative.
Business Never Personal was successful both critically and commercially, going Gold and earning raves in many publications. Sermon and Smith kept things together long enough to shoot a pair of videos for the album (reportedly the set of the “Headbanger” was particularly contentious) and complete the aforementioned US tour. News of the split leaked soon after, and each pursued their separate solo careers. Five years later, they’d reunite to record Back in Business (1997), but that’s a story for a different tribute.
To this day, neither Erick Sermon nor Parrish Smith talk publicly about the circumstances that fractured the group nearly 30 years ago. They seem content touring either on their own or with whatever “throwback rap tour” is on the road during any given summer and maintaining a professional partnership.
But no matter the current state of affairs, the teenager in me wishes it was 1992, and for the illusion to be reality. Back then, when I first heard Business Never Personal, I knew that EPMD was going to be forever, and that hip-hop would never die.
Enjoyed this article? Read more about EPMD here:
Strictly Business (1988) | Unfinished Business (1989) | Business As Usual (1990)
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