EPMD’s latest work speaks volumes, via music and books

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EPMD perform onstage during the VH1 Hip Hop Honors at Hammerstein Ballroom on October 2, 2008 in New York City. (Photo by Scott Gries/Getty Images)

Driving home from a children’s book-release event in Mystic, Conn. one recent Sunday evening, Parish Smith – aka the P in EPMD, the august hip-hop duo from Long Island, N.Y., – was kvelling.

“The reading went excellent, excellent, excellent,” rapper Smith exulted, while his young son Jay piped up from the passenger seat, “I read the whole book!” Asked for details about said children’s volume, the 10-year old proffered, “It’s about autism.”

EPMD When: 9 p.m. Dec. 27 Where: The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. West Tickets: $22-$37 (17+over) Info: www.promontorychicago.com

Jay himself is autistic, and as Smith put it, “I’ve been in the hip-hop [business] for 30 years and I’ve seen a lot, but nothing like this. Sometimes when Jay says stuff, I’m amazed; I ask him, ‘Where do you get that from?’”

Parish Smith had been tapped as a celebrity reader of “Jagger’s World of Autism: Will You Be My Friend?” by Dennis Vanasse, at the holiday fundraiser in Mystic they’d just attended. As it turned out, though, his son was very keen on doing the actual honors.

Still, Smith “didn’t want to slight” the event’s sponsor, Foundation of Autism Acceptance Worldwide. So he told author Vanasse (who also co-founded the non-profit and serves as its vice president), “Hey, I know you brought me here, but Jay is really adamant about reading.” Dennis was like, ‘Yo, let ’im go for it.’ With all those children there, I thought it would have a big impact, and Jay really took it where it needed to be.”

“When a public figure like Parish steps into the spotlight to support autism,” Vanasse, whose career in special education spans 22 years, observed in a separate call, “millions of fans and followers step in and reciprocate his efforts. Parish is a gentleman, a really family-oriented guy.”

EPMD in 2008. (Photo by Scott Gries/Getty Images for Vh1)

EPMD in 2008. (Photo by Scott Gries/Getty Images for Vh1)

“I love having Jay around when I’m freestyling, when I’m writing,” Smith mused as he drove over the Throgs Neck Bridge and onto Long Island. “It’s so much sharper than when it’s just me, feeding off myself.”

His tender, solicitous bond with his son was palpable even over the cell-phone connection as Smith motored on, pointing out assorted New York City landmarks (“That’s the Brooklyn Bridge, Jay!”) in between reflecting on his and rapper partner Erick Sermon’s lengthy, storied tenure as EPMD. Smith doesn’t, by the way, much care for the designation “old-school,” instead preferring Golden Era; it happens that he’s close to releasing his own literary rap retrospective (co-authored with Vanasse), called “Strictly Business: The Golden Era of Hip-Hop Through the Eyes of Parish Smith.”

“Strictly Business” is also the name of EPMD’s influential 1988 debut album, the first in a string of long-players with “Business” in their titles (all of the dyad’s first six albums, incidentally, were eventually certified both gold and platinum).

“EPMD’s blueprint for East Coast rap wasn’t startlingly different from many others in rap’s golden age,” AllMusic.com’s five-star review of “Strictly Business” pointed out, “but the results were simply amazing, a killer blend of good groove and laid-back flow, plus a populist sense of sampling that had heads nodding from the first listen.”

Smith name-checked superstars who’ve sampled classic EPMD tracks – “Jay-Z used ‘It’s My Thing,’ DMX used ‘Get the Bozack,’ Nas used ‘Let the Funk Flow,’ Mary J. Blige and Biggie Smalls used ‘So Whatcha Sayin’” – before recounting a recent and most gratifying fan encounter:

“After a show in Nebraska, a middle-aged couple approaches, with their 21-year old son – I’ll keep it 100, they were rich. They have a still-wrapped vinyl copy of ‘Strictly Business.’ They open it in front of me – Erick [whom they would meet presently] was in the dressing room – and the man says, ‘Me and my wife purchased this four days before we got married in 1988, and we promised ourselves we wouldn’t open it until we’d seen you. Could you sign it, please?’

“They buy the album in 1988,” Smith marveled, “and then 28 years later they take the time to come to our show, and they’re opening it? And they want us to sign it?

“That,” the veteran MC concluded, “is what you work for.”

Moira McCormick is a local freelance writer.

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