“Strictly Business” by EPMD

It’s the 35th anniversary of one of hip-hop’s most slept-on classics, a veritable blueprint for sampling success.

Along with the Dust Brothers and the Bomb Squad, Erick Sermon (E Double E) and Parrish Smith (PMD) of EPMD were hugely influential pioneers of hip-hop sampling artistry. They were masters at taking instantly recognizable snippets from other well-known tracks, putting them in a sonic blender, and presenting them in an entirely new context. It’s a deceptively simple concept that shines on tracks like “You’re a Customer,” which marries samples from ZZ Top and the Steve Miller Band; “You Gots to Chill,” with its funky fusion of Zapp and Kool & the Gang; and the eponymous opener, which takes Eric Clapton’s cover of “I Shot the Sheriff” and completely reframes over top of a driving beat and record scratches. When I was a kid just getting into hip hop, this record, along with Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, blew my mind. More than any other records, they showed me how sampling can reconfigure your entire relationship with different tracks and genres, helping them achieve a new kind of immortality through alchemy.

All that said, the sampling isn’t the only reason to listen to Strictly Business either. The rapping from Sermon and Smith, at times finishing each other’s bars with an effortless fluidity, clearly takes its lead from the Rakim school of hip-hop without ever feeling like a cheap copy. The flows are always relaxed and smooth, choosing deliberate, if simple, rhyming schemes over scenery-chewing theatricality. The result is an effortless listen that’s equally effective blasting out of your car speakers or getting you through a chill weekend afternoon. There are also a ton of quotable lyrics that serve as a warning to all whack emcees: peddle your weak game at your own peril.