Consumer Guide Album

EPMD: Strictly Business [Fresh, 1988]
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. A-