In Brief

*** EPMD, “Business Never Personal,” Def Jam. As with AC/DC in rock, one album differs not too much from the next, but it hardly matters--an EPMD album is always one of the good ones, deadly slow in tempo, powered by a rock-solid heavy groove and featuring the inimitable mush-mouthed rhyming of archetypal B-boy Erick Sermon. EPMD’s fourth intensifies the hard-core gangsta direction of last year’s album, just in time for the long, hot summer.

Albums are rated on a scale of one asterisk (poor) to four (excellent).