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Tail-end golden era rap fanatics rejoice—the Hit Squad is back! Emerging after Long Islanders Erick Sermon and Parish Smith found fame as EPMD, the Hit Squad drafted in the duo's pugnacious rap mates Redman, K-Solo, Keith Murray and Das EFX and reigned as one of the most beloved rap posses of the early '90s. Alas, internal bickering scuppered the crew's chances of any real longevity, but in the Hit Squad's pomp they helped forge a period of raw-but-funky east coast '90s rap. With what's being billed as a full-on reunion show this Friday at the Best Buy Theater—although with the egos involved, you'll want to take that with a healthy dose of cynicism—here's a countdown the Squad's most dynamite hits. (Possibly Convoluted Pedant's Note: While Sermon's post-EPMD break-up Def Squad splinter group subsequently dropped some dope jams—and that long-ass eight-minute posse cut with Busta Rhymes's Flipmode goons—we're running with the logic that only when EPMD were officially in business could a song be classified as a true Hit Squad moment.)

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"Otis" fever is in full effect, thanks to the Otis Redding-sampling song from Jay-Z and Kanye West's much-ballyhooed Watch The Throne project leaking Wednesday night. The track's production, based around a slick chop of Redding's "Try A Little Tenderness," might be the most impressive thing about the song, what with Jay-Z largely forgoing rapping for doing that breathless thing which suggests not so much an economy of breath control as him realizing that he can mumble anything and fans will still give him pots of money. But anyway. In celebration of "Otis," here are ten other royal rap flips of Redding's music.

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This posting is real, incidentally: we just got off the phone with the group's Andre Weston, who confirmed that he'd upped the advertisement yesterday. Since then, about 50 people have contacted the duo. Why use Craigslist, a place people typically use to sell couches, and not to pick up new management in the industry they've been toiling in since 1988? "Shit, you saw it," Dre explains, "and about 50 other people saw it, so I'm just taking advantage of these outlets that are out here nowadays." He added: "We're just trying to make a connection with whoever is out there trying to make something happen." And what is one of the greatest rap crews of the '90s looking for in a manager, circa 2010?

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