-http://www.nextbook.org/..cultural/feature.html?id=1355
Eprhyme's recent two-song EP "Punklezmerap" was released by K Records,
a label more renowned for indie rock (The Moldy Peaches, Modest Mouse)
than hip-hop. But Eprhyme (who was known in a previous life as Eden
Pearlstein) writes lyrics peppered with bits of Jewish mysticism and
philosophy that fit the label's iconoclastic bent.

As much as I enjoy listening to artists like Kosha Dillz, I can't
help but wonder, would he still be dropping lines about Manischewitz if
there wasn't a more-or-less guaranteed audience? Eprhyme gives hope to
those of us in search of something more substantial. He wears his
influences on his sleeve, with lyrical and thematic nods to hip-hop
groups like A Tribe Called Quest and The Roots, but his flow is
entirely his own. In the song "Punkzlemerap," Eprhyme gives a
mini-autobiography, playing up his dilettante side ("I'm not the kind
of guy to stay too long in one spot/Before hip hop, I  was into punk rock")
while simultaneously striving to connect to something higher
("this is the sound of a different drummer/straight from the mouth of number wonder/613 to keep and remember").
And when he does employ a Jewish cliché, like lifting a chorus
from "Fiddler on the Roof" for the song "Where the Heart Is," he isn't
throwing it in blindly. Instead, he twists, wrenches, and squeezes
meaning through the different permutations of the song's verses. "Why
must I travel to a distant land/far from the home I love," he sings,
echoing both Tevye and an R&B diva. His new work, especially an
upcoming project with Shir Feinstein-Feit, promises to dive even
deeper; in the song "Shomer Salaam," he chants, "The niglah is the
nistar," which literally means that concealed and revealed are the same
thing. It's one of his several hat-tips to Hasidic philosophy, which
he's likely to follow up with a quote from the Koran. It's a far cry
from the bagels-and-lox Judaism of many Jewish hip-hop acts today, and
it's a welcome breath of fresh air.