Times Square

“My sense is that we’re so far ahead of everybody, they can’t even have a dialogue with us.”

“Nobody can.”

“And that’s what I told them! In less than two months, I will transform your office from print to digital. The things you make, the way you make them, even the way you look at the world. I am that guy.”

“Total synergy.”

“Everything is connected now. We need to get them on MySpace and the Twitter.”

“So we’ll get Live Aid, a reality show, a web contest — and did you see the house where they’re filming? $100 million is nothing for all that.”

“Sure, he was a big deal in the eighties, brilliant even, but Ted Turner is bullshit now.”

“But he’s got money and we don’t.”

“We’ll get the money.”

[murmuring]

“. . . and while I have no credentials, I have vast experience . . .”

— overheard while waiting in line at a Starbucks on Broadway.

* * *

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EPMD – You’re a Customer
from Strictly Business. Priority, 1988 | buy mp3s
1988 might have been the best year for hip-hop. Consider Too $hort’s Born to Mack, BDP’s By Any Means Necessary, Public Enemy’s Nation of Millions, along with albums by Slick Rick, Big Daddy Kane, Ultramagnetic MCs, and so on. EPMD’s Strictly Business is a big factor in making 1988 great, although it’s something of an outlier.

On the face of it, pairing mumble-mouth Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith’s monotone with a few clunky Kool & the Gang samples doesn’t seem like it should add up to a classic. EPMD never had the verbal agility of Rakim, the political fire of Public Enemy, or the production skills of Stetsasonic, yet somehow they’re greater than the sum of their parts. There is no concept here (the album cover simply shows the duo sitting in their studio wearing matching sweaters), yet EPMD struck a perfect chord on this record, hitting a note that sums up everything that comes to mind when reminiscing on hip hop’s “Golden Age” (we might as well admit it’s not coming back). I think you’ll hear it in the genius of this lyric:

“I need a man meal sandwich, yes I mean Manwich. I feel good, now it’s time to do damage.”