DX: Yeah, that “Give It 2 ‘Em” joint that you and Vic got, that was tight.
ES: That’s what I thought too. But once I dropped that I kinda got a little panicked. I was like, “No waaaaaay that niggas is not giving it up to me for this.” Not the underground, Internet shit – the Internet [feedback] make you feel good as hell… It was nothing more b-boy than that [record]. And I’m far from wack. I don’t be talking shit about myself, that ain’t my style. But I know what music is. I know how to make a record. I know how to make a song. And so I feel like, “You know what? I know what I’m dealing with now.” So I said, “Fuck it. I’m not gonna go the other route and do something commercial. I’m doing my music strictly for the heads.” ‘Cause when I’m out there [performing], the heads are going crazy. And that’s who’s mattering right now to me. Like, yo, you don’t have to compete. That’s what I tell other veterans in the game like, “Yo, don’t compete with them kids. Those are kids. This is their era. This ain’t your era. So don’t compete with them. Do you.”

DX: I also gotta dap you up for that “Main Event” track. That shit was one of the best joints y’all ever did in my opinion.
ES: Yeah man, we was the second act to do that – I heard Ghostface [click to read] was first – where you write your shit on stage, and they watch you while you do that and while you go in the booth and you laying it down. And KnowHow did a dope job with the beat. And [DJ] Scratch was able to cut on it too. So that came out really hot.

DX: Is Scratch still around y’all? Is he gonna be involved with the new project?
ES: Well, you know how people get. [Laughs] Scratch is like…people do their own thing. We never hung around Scratch that tough. And I guess like people's views [of each other] change. We still love him to death though. But me and Parrish have an agenda [with this new project], and he's on a different page [than the page we’re on]. We still do shows with him and the whole nine, but sometimes people don't believe what you're doing [is authentic]. And I don't blame them.

DX: I wanna switch gears here and again go back in the EPMD timeline. I don’t know if you wanna revisit this or not, but if you don’t mind break down for our readers how you guys put the E and the P back together after such a messy split. Like, what steps you guys took to actually be Back In Business.
ES: What happened was I called Parrish after the deaths of Tupac and Biggie. When I came home from L.A. [after Biggie’s murder] I called him. I was in L.A. for the [Soul Train] Awards. I was in the [same] hotel [as Biggie]. Matter of fact, Keith Murray was in the hotel room [kickin’ it] with [Biggie] either the night before or that night [he was murdered]. But once that happened, I felt like while Hip Hop was so negative niggas would be excited if they heard that EPMD was coming [back together]. It didn’t take a whole lot off the [dark climate surrounding Hip Hop], but that was some good news to hear for Hip Hop. I figured that we had to make that happen.

DX: Was Parrish receptive to your initial call, or was he…?
ES: P was waiting on that phone call. Because in actuality, Parrish had been trying to get in touch with me for years. I’m the one that was not trying to talk to him. Don’t forget, it wasn’t me that [orchestrated a break in of his home]. They was accusing me of what happened.

DX: Well that cop in the Beef documentary sound like he still wanna find you.
ES: At that time, yeah, it was heavy. But that was mad years ago though.

DX: This is just a loose question I have about the group: I’m from Cincinnati, Ohio, and southwest Ohio is the arguable birthplace of Funk music, so I’ve always wanted to ask you what motivated two New Yorkers to start spittin’ over Zapp samples?
ES: It’s just what we felt. We were sampling so much funk music that L.A. niggas thought we was from there. But it’s just what we felt. And my parents [listened to funk music]. I know Parrish’s father was a big Roger Troutman/Zapp fan. And so when we got a chance to get on, we sampled the records we had around the crib.

DX: And originally you guys worked more as a production team, like in tandem, right?
ES: Yeah, in the beginning, we worked as a team. Whatever [records] we had we would get together and we would loop ‘em together, and do ins and outs on things. But people don’t know Parrish was very influential in the EPMD [music making] process on the first, second and third LP’s. But by the fourth [album], I did that whole thing dolo. Continued on page 4 »