The Green Eyed Bandit returns ... E-Double-E himself.

Or maybe you're more familiar with the name his parents gave him: Erick Sermon. That's because in a lexicon overflowing with abbreviations and nicknames -- "MC" this, "Ice" that -- there's only one rapper genuine enough to use his full name on records: Erick Sermon.

Since 1988, Sermon has elevated plain-spoken rap to an artform, selling millions of albums without making a single concession to the marketplace. With his trademark slurred delivery, the rapper shuns gangster posturing in favor stream-of-consciousness tales about everyday life in the "boondox" aka Brentwood, LI. "You can't lose focus. If the world is changing, you can't just change with it. If you never talked about guns or smoking weed on your other records before, don't do it now."

As the "E" in EPMD, Sermon's hit streak began with Strictly Business, the classic album featuring the jeep-crushing funk of "You Gots To Chill" and "It's My Thing." Strictly Business sold 300,000 units the day of its release, and was quickly certified RIAA gold. Each EPMD album since -- Unfinished Business (with "So What Ya Sayin"), Business As Usual ("Gold Digger"), and the group's final Def Jam/RAL/Columbia outing, 1992's Business Never Personal ("Crossover") -- outsold and outcharted its predecessor, setting the course for the laid-back funk style that now runs rampant in hip-hop.

When EPMD broke up late in 1992, Sermon didn't look back. "I was writing non-stop. it must have been from God or something. I won't take nothing from EPMD, but everything that's good must end."

And from that end comes more good.

No Pressure (Def Jam/RAL/Chaos), Erick Sermon's self-produced solo debut, is 12 tracks of vintage, funk-flavored hip-hop, no frills and no filler. "You get into the song and you get the f*ck out," he explains. "The less songs, and the shorter they are, the better. You want people to fiend, to rewind, not to fast-forward." The CD features a bonus track, the wise-cracking "Female Species."

No Pressure features a series of between-song skits in which cynical journalists -- male and female -- frantically dog sermon, questioning whether he can still bring the funk as a solo artist. In typical style, he lets his music do the talking.

"Stay Real," the first single, is a lyrical molotov cocktail married to a Zapp chorus. The sequel to EPMD's hit single "Crossover," Sermon's 1993 manifesto hits even harder: "The Green-Eyed Bandit coming funky with the tune/Yes I'm blowing up like Tom Berenger in Platoon/ ... I could kill a man for being false plus extra fake on the tape/talking hardcore when you soft like a piece of cake."

Sermon balances his ill regard for sell-out rappers with optimism. "Seems like ral rap -- the hardcore shit -- is back in. Pretty soon, all the stadiums will be filled again like they was in Run's heyday." Appropriately, a snippet of Run-DMC's classic "Run's House" winds through "Stay Real," Sermon's fitting tribute to the originators of the hardcore rap style he favors.

Another highlight is "The Ill Shit," a historic hip-hop summit featuring two West Coast rappers whose artistic debt to Erick is obvious: Ice Cube and Kam. "I liked Kam's flow on 'Peace Treaty,' so I called up Cube and I said I wanted to get with Kam," Sermon explains. "Then Cube said, 'Yo, I wanna get with this too.' I went to L.A. and chilled with Cube, Kam, and their whole posse. Shot some hoops. They was trippin' on meetin' me, and I was just as glad to meet them."

On "The Ill Shit," Ice Cube voices his support for Sermon's solo venture in no uncertain terms: "Heard some new shit/What is this?/EPMD is going out of business/Goddamn I can't leave my dog stranded/Who?/The Green Eyed Bandit." Kam sums it up: "What's up, now you can determine/The West Coast niggas is down with Erick Sermon."

On "Hostile," Erick introduces the world to his latest discovery, the raspy voiced 19 year-old Keith Murray, who waxes poetic: "The most beautifulest thing in the world is my notion for murderous poetry in motion/And the illiotic shit I come across, when realising trapped air with explosive force/I'll push your head through the cracks of insanity and have your brain doing a bid in purgatory." Stay tuned for Murray's Sermon-produced debut.

Lusty conquests and their consequences (remember Jane?) continue to play a major role in Sermon's life, from the sibling surprise of the hilarious "The Hype" to the irresistible "Safe Sex," the b-side of "Stay Real." With its whiplash loop and snug chorus, the track is bound to get heads nodding -- and then thinking.

"There aren's enough black people talking about safe sex," says Erick, displaying a compassion that his parents, who've worked with learning disabled children for years, would be proud of. The rapper's philosophy for getting through to kids on the street? "The beat's gotta get you first -- it puts the message in their head."

Erick has kept up the musical innovation on his solo debut by utilizing Colin Wolfe, the musical mastermind playing those serpentine keyboards all over Dr. Dre's the Chronic. Wolfe adds instrumental spice to "All In The Mind." Live is where it's at for E-double's future jams. "Pretty soon all the good breakbeats will be used up. I've bought a drum set, and I'm learning to play so I can loop my own beats, grooves I hear in my head."

As far as dope lyrics go, no matter where you drop the laser on No Pressure, there's "enough lyrical food to keep the Ethiopians fed" ("Do It Up"). Just check 'Imma Gitz Mine" ("I'm doper than chronic/A million dollar man but I'm not bionic"), or his slyly-sung assertion "I've been rich and I've been poor/Now I'm back in the door, hardcore" from a cut entitled "Erick Sermon.

Off-mike, Erick's been following the funk non-stop, twisting knobs for the likes of Run-DMC, Redman (his protege, who cameos on the album's "Swing It Over Here"), Boss, ABC, Illegal, TLC, Shadz Of Lingo (who goes ballistic on No Pressure "Li'l Crazy") Shaquille O'Neal, and Chronic.

Erick's production style -- speaker-shredding bass, a smidgen of melody, monstrous groove -- is second to none. "I construct my loops and choruses for the maximum hook. Every sound, every beat, is there for a reason. For years, I've done my own production at home, and then bounced it to 24 tracks in the studio." For future work, though, he's building a 24 track SSL studio in his basement, dubbing it "Boonie Sound."

Instead of the bitterness one might expect, Sermon, who has relocated from the boondox of Brentwood to Atlanta, Georgia, is straight-up about the break-up of EPMD. "I don't want a war -- that's bad luck, bad karma. It's just me now, and I have to say so. I was always the personality, the funny stuff in EPMD. I put that all into No Pressure. I make records for the people, not myself -- I make what I think they wanna hear. It's not about image. I'm real with mine."

Coming from Erick Sermon, hip-hop's master of understatement, that's truly a mouthful.

Stay tuned for Erick's New Album "Double Or Nothing"