Business As Usual: Dec 18 1990
(It could be any EPMD album…but that cover…)
Between the years 1988 and 1992 EPMD were ol’ reliable. They released four gold albums in that time, established a formula, and, like Gangstarr, were one of the most prominent acts in the early to mid 90s. I could have picked any record, but I chose Business as Usual because of the intersection of my early comic obsession and Hip-Hop.
Although music is my first love, it wasn’t until I was twelve that Hip-Hop acted like a magnifying glass concentrating funk, jazz, rock, and lyrics into a single beam that burned with me for a little over a decade. Prior to that it was all about sports and comics.
We watched every sport imaginable, from cycling to tennis, from baseball to football. But when it came to comics, me and my older brother, Ade, were Marvel snobs; only the Teen Titans got a pass. And it was a great time, the so-called Bronze Era between 70 and 85.
I’on’t know nathan about 70 to 80, I’ll take they word on it. I come into the picture with the Dark Phoenix arc. But it wasn’t the only great storyline. There was the Daredevil, Elektra, Bullseye saga. You had the Wolverine/Mariko marriage that spun off into a mini-series, Beta Ray Bill, Secret Wars, etc. etc.
Stories were great but I was mostly there for the art. Me, Ade, and our brother Therone Bell would grab poster board or the largest piece of paper that we could get our hands on, find an action scene or superhero pose, and painstakingly copy it large scale (feet and hands were the most difficult).
We had our favorite artists too: John Byrne, George Perez, Frank Miller, Walt Simonson, Jim Starlin, & Bill Sienkiewicz…to name a few. Each had their distinct style and the latter three were known to experiment — Simonson with proportions, Starlin with paints, and Sienkiewicz with abstractions.
His abstractions beginning with the Demon Bear Saga (Aug 84) spawned the recent FX show, Legion and it was his work on the New Mutants that etched Sienkiewicz’s art in my brain. Fast forward six years and I would see his work in the most unlikeliest of places — a Rap album.
I was broker than the Ten Commandments my freshman year in college. I ain’t buy not a one cassette. If someone had an album I liked, I would give them a blank or recycled tape and ask them to make a copy for me. That’s how I first got Business as Usual.
My brother Shawn McCallister stayed in Dubois and his roommate Khalil had that album on repeat. Khalil was from the head of Medina (Fort Greene) and would bore Shawn and I with his tales of how he planned on listening to this particular EPMD album, cruising through Prospect Park, top dropped on the ride we ain’t believe he had.
I’m surprised I’m not scarred from how much Khalil played that album, I’m sure Shawn is. But I’m sorry Shawn, that album has some gems on there. L gives some of his best bars ever on “Rampage,” you got Redman’s first appearance, and how you gonna deny the scratching on “Funky Piano?”
Supposedly, it’s not as acclaimed as Strictly Business and Unfinished Business. To me, EPMD raised the bar on Business as Usual culminating on what I consider their opus, Business Never Personal. But of all of those albums, Bill Sienkiewicz’s reigns supreme.
I ain’t see the cover until I bought my own copy of the cassette during the ‘Hang Out Summer of 91.’ Growing up, I never looked at myself as a nerd because I read comics, I was never ostracized or teased for doing it. Yet I never thought it was something that rappers like EPMD would be into (I ain’t know how records were made back then).
Nonetheless, you had to figure that Cey Adams proposed the idea to Erick and Parrish and they either went along with it or they got super excited (like I would have). No matter how it happened, it is one of the most iconic Rap album covers…and the music on there ain’t so bad either.
