EPMD

At the Middle East, Cambridge,

Aug. 14 at 8 p.m. Tickets: $25, advance $22. 617-864-3278, www.mideastclub.com

EPMD, Long Island’s long-running, pioneering hip-hop duo, marks its 30th anniversary this year, and comes to the Middle East in Cambridge this Saturday to celebrate. Over the course of four albums released in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith created a body of work that epitomized the party-funk of hip-hop’s early underground era, and predicted the aesthetic that would fuel the art form’s mainstream dominance. EPMD helped to foster the careers of other classic performers like Redman and Das EFX, while continuing to create albums with a depth and consistency often lost among later-career hip-hop acts. In a recent telephone interview, Sermon discussed the duo’s early influences, ingenious recording techniques, and three decades in the rap game.

Q. Congratulations on hitting 30 years — that’s a remarkable milestone for any career in music.

A. I don’t realize that until we say it every night — when we say it, the crowd erupts. Now I kind of get it, too, you know? I take it for granted that it’s OK. But it’s not just OK, you’re right: After 30 years, to still have people coming to see you is something special.

Q. How has this tour been going? How are crowds reacting?

A. Hip-hop is stronger than ever. Of course, for so long there’s been a takeover in the rap business, cats making whatever these new kids call hip-hop, and the “mainstream’’ is still the mainstream, and they’re still promoting and playing that other new rap music. But around the world, hip-hop still reigns supreme — nobody on this tour has hit records and it’s still sold out, so that just shows you how powerful the music is.

Q. How did EPMD come together initially?

A. Around ’85 or whatever, we were going to make a demo. I had moved to Parrish’s neighborhood, from the north side to the west side of Brentwood [New York]. Parrish was playing football. . . he was in college playing at SCSU [Southern Connecticut State University]. By ’85 we had made that demo, but Parrish had to go back school. So in ’86 we made another demo, and then we got signed at the end of ’87, November. Our first album came out in 1988. That was “Strictly Business.’’

Q. When you made those demos, where did you record? What kind of equipment were you using?

A. We recorded with this guy Charlie Marotta. Back then, all the studios on Long Island were in houses, not buildings or anything like that. Charlie was upstairs in his attic, we had egg cartons [as sound baffles] and an eight-track Mackie [mixing] board. It wasn’t that much equipment.

We used to record to tape and then record back to tape to make a loop — there were no machines around that could make a loop. [The sample of the Whole Darn Family’s] “Seven Minutes of Funk,’’ on the “It’s My Thing’’ single, we had to make up a way to loop it. You can’t really picture it, but we would make a loop around the room, around the chair, around the table, whatever it took, and then record it back to tape.

When we say “loop it,’’ we mean repeat it — we had to find a way to repeat it, not having the equipment. So we did it that way, by splicing tape, something that people didn’t do back then. You didn’t want to splice tape, because you didn’t know if it was going to be on time or not. You have to see it for real; I’m not doing it justice, no way. You have to see this piece of tape going around the chair, going around the lamp, going around whatever, just to make a loop to record back to another tape.

Q. What were you listening to back in those days?

A. Everything! EPMD was the group that came out the latest, so we got listen to everyone. Eric B & Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, Public Enemy, Slick Rick, MC Lyte: They all came before us. Even though we all dropped records the same year, they all came out before me and Parrish did. We were able to have all that to listen to before we came, that’s why we were so on point. We were the last to come out, of that era of great people, we were the last to come out. . . . We were the last ones in the bunch. We were blessed to hear all of that before we came, that’s why we were so advanced and we were so different. We were able to see what they were doing and them make our own music.

EPMD

At the Middle East, Cambridge, Aug. 14 at 8 p.m. Tickets: $25, advance $22. 617-864-3278, www.mideastclub.com

Sean L. Maloney can be reached at s.l.maloney@gmail.com.