It's My Thing

EPMD's "It's My Thing" is foundational late-80s hip-hop, the debut salvo that announced Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith's signature aesthetic of unbothered cool. The track rides a thick, funk-soaked loop — chopped from Marva Whitney's James Brown-produced original — laying a fat, head-nodding groove beneath the duo's trademark laid-back delivery. Where many of their peers chased aggression or speed, EPMD invented a different lane: rhymes drawled with almost lazy confidence, every boast landing harder for how unhurried it sounds. Sermon's slurred, distinctive flow and Smith's steadier cadence trade braggadocio about lyrical supremacy and getting paid, the "strictly business" ethos that titled their album. The production is raw and sample-driven in the way of its golden-age moment, the drums punchy and uncluttered, the funk loop given room to breathe and ride. There's no chorus hook in the modern sense; the groove itself is the hook, hypnotic and endlessly loopable. Culturally this is a cornerstone — a template for the relaxed, funk-grounded East Coast sound that would ripple through hip-hop for years, influencing everyone who understood that menace could be communicated through calm. It belongs to the lineage of crate-digging, of beats built from records your parents owned. For heads who prize the genre's roots, the unkillable bounce of a perfect loop and two MCs who never need to raise their voices to dominate, it remains essential.