Just a little bit over a week ago (Jan. 23) rapper and producer Erick Sermon from famed golden era hip-hop duo EPMD uncovered a rather crispy new song featuring fellow hip-hop notables Craig Mack (the return of Craig Mack? Maybe.), Mr. Cheeks and Method Man titled “Come Thru.” The song will be featured on Sermon’s upcoming album, Go, which will be the bona fide artist’s eighth solo album. In recent months, he started a Kickstarter campaign for the sake pending funds.
In classic Greened-eye Bandit fashion, the beat begins with ideal bumbling drums hoarding a steadfast beat that manages Sermon’s sparing looping tactic. Borrowing the flow from the first two lines of Wu-Tang classic “M.E.T.H.O.D. Man,” Sermon opens the track with snippy rhymes, “E.R.I.C.K. Sermon/Hey you ain’t worth my while/You don’t know me and you don’t know my style…” while Mr. Cheeks, Mack, and Meth follow up with ruffled bars delivering a soiree-like track.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Sermon explained the ease of curating “Come Thru,” “The mixture [of Method Man, Mr. Cheeks, and Craig Mack] makes a good club record. Getting everyone to collaborate is like friends getting back together. Everyone who I’m on the record with I’m already friends with, so it’s like a normal get-together.”
Well, this normal get together not only ties with “Come Thru,” but the whole entire Go album. The album will also include guest appearances from additional class-act vets such as Def Squad comrades Keith Murray and Redman, the daring AZ, Wu brother Ghostface Killah, Styles P of The Lox, West Coast notable Too $hort, Pharrell, versed producers Rockwilder and Devin The Dude, DJ legend Kid Capri, Big K.R.I.T, and Rico Barrino.
A Kickstarter campaign was started by Sermon for the sake of raising funds for the final touches on the project which include sampling, a sound engineer and elite marketing.
“I still have my studio in New York and all the original equipment which enabled me to produce beats like the popular 2001 track “Just Like Music,” sampling the late, great Marvin Gaye. Therefore many of the costs of producing a mainstream album are already covered. But I still need funds to finance the sampling – which doesn’t come cheap – plus a sound engineer and all the costs involved in marketing the album to as wide an audience as possible, not just die-hard hip hop fans but to introduce great music to a new generation,” Sermon wrote.
Go will be released on his new independent label, Def Squad Records which is also an attempt to revamp the staunch Def Squad trio. Sermon also reveals he will be launching his very own music video production team, Def Squad films in collaboration with longtime affiliate Shock B.
Sermon’s Kickstarter campaign pledges a goal of $60k and has so far raised a little over $20k. According to the campaign page, the album is set for release in April 2018.
