EPMD

Exceptional 1988 debut from Long Island duo Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith. Overflowing with sample-heavy beats and top-notch rhymes, Strictly Businessis a classic from start to finish. Nearly every song on here can pack dance floors to this day. Check out "I'm Housin'," "It's My Thing," and "You Gots To Chill."

Out of nowhere to the top of the charts, these frosty freezers are one more proof of the supposedly subliterate-to-subcriminal rap audience's exacting prerogatives--what's snapped up as freshest often is. The beats are disco hooks sampled full effect, two or three to the track; the attack is traditionalist, formalist, minimalist. Rapping almost exclusively about rap, E Double EE and Pee MD don't emote or pander or yuk it up. In their one sex boast, the skeezer gets the last word. (Grade - A-)