BY MAX LIGHT • AUGUST 14, 2018

More than 30 years ago, Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith formed EPMD. From dropping some of the most influential tracks in Hip-Hop history to surviving periods of breakup, the E and P are still together, still in business, and currently celebrating their 30-year anniversary in style.

The Brentwood, Long Island duo (along with group co-founder, DJ Diamond J) sat down with Los Angeles, California’s radio station 935 KDAY to discuss everything from EPMD’s West Coast influence to the upside of the streaming music model.

After one of Rap’s highest-profile breakups of the mid-1990s, E and P discussed mending their group with 1997’s Back In Business album. “Tupac had died, and Biggie died. So we figured that since the [N.W.A.] breakup was so hard [on the culture], that us getting back together would be something special,” Erick says to KDAY’s Noah Ayala. “It did work for the moment,” adds E around 8:00, referring to the Def Jam group’s fifth consecutive gold LP. “Ever since ’97, we’ve just been doin’ shows.” Both E and P say that Back In Business is a favorite of the “young boys” in EPMD’s fan-base.

Sermon points out that when E and P separated, DJ Diamond J successfully toured with Beyoncé and Prince. “This was a dream come again to have the original [EPMD DJ] back,” Sermon says. In recent years, DJ Scratch publicly stepped away from the group he had DJ’d and co-produced since the late 1980s.

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