Five Earpieces 23rd July - still business
EPMD - We Mean Business
I know it's a fault, but I'm at times dismissive of new projects by formative groups that made major genre-defining moves a fair while in the past. I think it's like an assumption that people give what they can at a certain point in time and then move on. Everyone contributes then dies.
I reckon I'd even be skeptical if Tip, Phife and Mohammed dug A Tribe Called Quest out of the graveyard and put together another album. Sure I'd cop it, listen to it, but I'd be skeptical...
Anyway EPMD's latest release - like AG's Get Dirty Radio a couple of years back (not everyone'll agree with that) - puts this attitude of mine to shame. "We mean business" is no baseless claim - it's true. Eric and Parish return to the crease with hard, raw rhyme styles, dynamic musical ideas, great storytelling and top-level production. Not to mention that special extra intangible ingredient that just makes you feel deeply right when you blow it in your headphones.
It's not multi-syllable hyper-intellectual super-metaphorical stupidity (see the first 30 seconds of Dirt Nasty's 1980 for a great parody of what I'm talking about - hilarious). Like Akbar's Big Bang Boogie (check No Suckas Allowed from that project - massively slept on track), We Mean Business is just dope hip hop. It's pretty hard too. Can't believe I missed EPMD in Sydney when they toured a couple of months ago...
"One mississippi, two mississippi,
three mississippi, cock back let it BLOW" indeed...
