Unfinished Business

While the second album from Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith falls into the “more refinement than risk” category of golden era hip-hop sophomore LPs, Unfinished Business serves as more than just a bridge between their early emergence and the ensuing Def Jam deal that would ensure their rep for the remainder of the ’90s. They knew their strengths and stuck to them while elaborating on them a bit: the laidback, conversational style that the two MCs would add a bit of pugilistic force to for shit-talk sessions like “The Big Payback” and “Get the Bozack,” the pulp-cinematic storytelling that would turn their femme fatale character Jane into a recurring chameleonic trickster figure, and production that stripped even the most wigged-out funk down to its toughest elements. The album peaks early with leadoff cut and sole single “So What Cha Sayin’” — both MCs rising to meet the head-nodding slipperiness of the beat with a heightened we told you already, weren’t you listening or something demand in their voices, and dropping almost nonchalantly brilliant lines along the way. It’s their rapport that really sustains them through the album, and they’ve honed it by giving themselves some room to divert from their formula in interesting ways — reminiscing about a humbling yet exciting come-up on “Please Listen to My Demo,” teetering on the verge of hip-house with the uptempo MFSB-sampling “It’s Time 2 Party,” unspooling a humiliating DUI scenario over John Carpenter-ish synth-rock on epic PSA “You Had Too Much to Drink,” and drawing off old-school party rhymes to make like a kiddie-rhyme-warping b-boy Electric Company on “Knick Knack Patty Wack” (including a booming verse from K-Solo that heads would enshrine as an all-time spotlight theft if he hadn’t spaced out and misspelled “B-I-R-D”). Strictly Business had more formative classics, and Business As Usual had harder beats, but Unfinished Business still captures EPMD in a top form that they never really fell off from.