The story behind EPMD’s ‘Da Joint’
When Erick Sermon, the New York City rapper and one-half of underground legends EPMD, is asked to reflect on the best works of his career, there are plenty of songs and albums for him to consider.
But, right up there with the very best of them, is the track ‘Da Joint,’ the lead single from EPMD’s fifth album Back in Business. Produced by Rockwilder and Sermon himself, the song, while not exactly breaking records, sold decently well upon its release—and it has since become an outright cult classic.
Back in Business, released in 1997, marked the return of EPMD following a hiatus that began in fairly tetchy circumstances four years earlier.
Sermon and his EPMD partner, Parrish Smith, had fallen out, but that year of 1997 was a tough one for hip-hop—and that encouraged the pair to put aside their differences, as Sermon explained to Complex in 2012. “2Pac had died, and then Biggie Smalls had passed away,” he noted. “And while hip-hop was mourning two losses, I figured that an EPMD reunion would be dope. DJ Dice, who was Das EFX’s DJ, was able to get me and Parrish on the phone. And we didn’t bring up any negative stuff. It was just, ‘Let’s do this for hip-hop.’”
The basic beat upon which ‘Da Joint’ was constructed was, as Sermon explained during his conversation with Complex, created by Rockwilder, a producer known best, perhaps, for his work with Redman. Rockwilder had put together the bare bones of the song himself, with the initial intention of letting someone else use it. But, after he showed it to Sermon, the EPMD man loved it so much that he wanted to commandeer it. Sermon later called Rockwilder to ask for the beat, and, in the end, Rockwilder agreed to it.
That wasn’t the end of the story, though. As much as Sermon liked what Rockwilder had created, he still felt the track needed some finishing touches. “The beat was dope the way it was sounding, but I knew it would really, really be dope once I got it in the studio,” he remembered. “I wanted to enhance the bass line, and add a chorus imprint so you know the chorus is coming on.”
The beat, once Sermon had left its mark on it, was a winner, and ‘Da Joint’ ultimately became a decent hit for EPMD. “The CD sold like 100,000 copies the first week, and no one was expecting that because we were gone for so long,” Sermon explained. “Even the label wasn’t expecting that. They knew we were going to do something, but not like that.”
That was a good performance on its own terms, and it also propelled the success of the whole Back in Business album. It reached number 16 on the Billboard 200, while also securing the fourth spot on the R&B and hip-hop album chart. It ended up being certified gold, too, in recognition of the fact it sold half a million copies. EPMD’s return from the wilderness was, in other words, a fruitful one, driven by its lead single ‘Da Joint.’