Mobb Deep — The Infamous

A few months after the release of their debut, Mobb Deep are dropped off the label due to the disappointing sales result and they're about to withdraw from a scene in constant motion and which cannot wait for them to see them triumph. Prodigy and Havoc don't give up, they work on a darker production than in the past and produce a demo tape that, through the wise hands of Matty C and Schott Free, gets to the Stretch & Bobbito radio show and gains some attention. After securing the Wu-Tang Clan, Loud Records, of which Free is an A&R, looks for a new hardcore group to sign and in autumn 1993 they agree with Mobb Deep. The following year they released the promotional single "Shook Ones" (Part I) and began recording their second studio album. The production is made by Mobb Deep and The Abstract aka Q-Tip, whose presence behind the scenes is fundamental, while guests are Crystal Johnson, Big Noyd, Ty Nitty of Infamous Mobb, Nas, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah and Q-Tip.

The album is beautiful from the first second. On an elegant piano, glossy sounds, and a wonderful bassline, Havoc introduces the track dedicating it to Ty Nitty's deceased brother and opening his verse with a quote to AZ straight from "Life's a Bitch". The mood is dark and gloomy, then comes a hard, dirty, dry and dusty drum, it seems to come out of one of the darkest alleys in Queensbridge and the two guys deliver bars crammed with their own neighborhood slang, with sublime style and confident, smooth, clean, dope flow, stating that if you bump into them you won't get out alive. A Prodigy prelude in which he explains who he is and why he is here, precedes the third track, "Survival of the Fittest".

"Survival of the Fittest" is the second single from the album, one of the duo's best-known songs, and more importantly, one of the best songs of the nineties. Havoc takes the first seconds of piano from Barry Harris & Al Cohn's "Skylark" and creates a timelessly beautiful loop. Prodigy introduces by dedicating the song to Havoc's brother, accompanied by a haunting loop, then opens his verse with what is believed to be one of the best opening lines in hip-hop history. The distant heavy bassline in the background and the piano give an elegant, haunting and deeply obscure look to the beat. When the drum falls, it seems that the whole world is about to collapse: the drum is very hard, heavy, metallic, perfect. Mobb Deep kill the cut with a grim, mighty, slow, dirty, energetic, smooth delivery. The hook is iconic, spectacular.

The track has Darwinian traits, even if the phrase is credited to Herbert Spencer, close to Lamark's theories; the boys are telling you that where they grew up, only the strongest and fittest survive, others succumb through a macabre natural selection that occurs as you walk their streets, an urban jungle made up of drug dealers, drug addicts, hoes, gangs, shootings, pimps and cops, in which you cannot be afraid, "you cannot hide forever", even if you're wearing a bulletproof vest, you don't know if you're going home alive, and where the only anesthetics that allow you to endure all of this are weed and alcohol.

"Eye for a Eye (Your Beef Is Mines)" is another authentic and spectacular certified classic. Prodigy, Havoc, Nas and Raekwon in an original track, some of the best hip-hop artists ever, all at their best, and all at a time when they created some of the greatest hip-hop albums ever. The Chef is making his first guest appearance on an album outside the Wu-Tang Clan and no rapper from the supergroup has ever been a guest on another artist's album before. That of Nas is also one of his first guest appearances on another artist's album. Hypnotic is probably the adjective that best fits this imaginative soundscape created by the genius of Havoc.

The sample is from an Al Green track, "I Wish You Were Here", which is simply beautiful. Now, try going to whosampled and comparing the two tracks: they sound completely different, because Havoc kept cutting and trimming the original sample so they don't have to clear it and, at the same time, making one of the most tormented productions of all the nineties. This beat scares you. He's afraid itself too, of what is to come. Powerful, deep, galactic and very dirty bass, dirty, dusty and dry midtempo drum, creepy loop. One of the most frightening rhythms of the time of what many fans more or less wrongly define as "noir rap" was born from the bowels of hell. On this dark and extremely cinematic rhythm, but not noir, Prodigy pronounces the chorus after letting the beat breathe for a few seconds, then along with the other three emcees, he delivers gangster verses. The bars runs dirty, energetic and grimy, slow and relentless, wonderful.

After Mobb Deep, there's the first verse of Nas through his pseudonym Nas Escobar, he enters crisp, smooth, clean and destroys the cut with extraordinary rapping and a sensational verse. Raekwon closes the song: at first glance you might think that he has inferior lyrics than the guys you just listened to, but the Park Hill artist is just giving you pictures, one after the other, that fit perfectly with the theme of the track, and he's doing it with a flowing, dirty, energetic and spectacular style, he kills the track with excellent rapping. Surprise final hook by Esco and outro by Lex Diamonds, the rhythm rightly breathes in the end for a while, it also deserved a couple of minutes.

Big Noyd and Prodigy do a freestyle on "(Just Step Prelude)", which precedes the sixth track, the first in which he's credited as producer The Abstract aka Q-Tip, fourth and final single of the album, "Give Up the Goods (Just Step)". The song describes how the boys rob people, continue to commit criminal acts and sell drugs to satisfy their material desires. Intro, the next seconds, heavenly, come directly from Esther Phillips' "That's All Right With Me", then a fresh, lively and crunchy drum comes out, powerful bass, deep, fantastic, Prodigy immediately attacks the beat and delivers smooth, confident with a dope flow, complementary to the rhythm, is magnificent.

Then the story changes. TaJuan Perry aka BIg Noyd arrives, third guest of the album after Nas and Raekwon, has an important responsibility. He's not on his debut, because he has already participated in the first Mobb Deep LP. He's not a rapper, he shouldn't be here, he's a friend of Havoc and Prodigy, and he's not going to be a professional rapper. You could also define him as a weed carrier, which is probably true before the verse he's about to follow, because after that the definition will fit too tightly. Big Noyd enters the track perfectly, makes a perfect entrance, with a line that somehow remains in the history of the genre and he rips the track with an unstoppable flow, energetic, confident, crisp, dope, at his best in career. He delivers a complicated and solid verse with his own style which, although technically uncertain, allows him to land a five-figure deal with Tommy Boy after performing it at a Mobb Deep concert a few months later. Havoc on the third verse, very lucid, fluid, energetic, technically flawless, he delivers hardcore and cements this cut among the best of the season. Prodigy returns to unearth and bury the song again, classic.

During the time they're recording, Havoc's brother Killa Black is wanted by the police following a crime and is eventually arrested. Mobb Deep enter the studio and release this track dedicated to Killa Black, a letter addressed to a friend on the run from the agents, third and last single of the CD. If you take this song out of its context and give it a dispassionate and thoughtless listening, it's possible to believe that this track isn't the masterpiece I'm describing. Unlike most of the songs on the album, the drum is the first thing you hear on this track. The Abstract takes it from Power of Zeus' "The Sorcerer of Isis (The Ritual of the Mole)" and reinforces it, setting the tone of the track right away and giving you the best possible image that fits it, that is a vivid sensation of rawness, cold, roughness and street, which sums up the gloomy concept of this passage, a runaway boy and friends who must now try to conceal evidence of his crime, as the police is coming and everyone in the neighborhood is talking about it, the situation is heating up, the temp is rising.

The harsh and dry midtempo drum is let to breathe, then Havoc starts delivering, it's the first time since the first song that he opens a track with the first verse. There's only a nice distant bass line to accompany the artist's hard bars, there are no melodic sounds, there are no samples, there's nothing to lighten the drum, which is still prominent in the track. Suddenly, in the middle of the verse, a magnificent sample emerges from "Where There Is Love" by Patrice Rushen, just as it arrived it soon leaves, only to return a second time, welcoming Crystal Johnson's wonderful hook, which pays homage to Quincy Jones' "Body Heat".

Prodigy completes the letter with verse number two: at the beginning of this long verse, which has the blessing of the Rushen sample and therefore sounds warmer than the previous one, Bandana P seems on the verge of saying the name of who actually gave the agents the address of the place where Killa Black was hiding, so the name has muted and the rapper seems to be taking a break. The song would be over in about three minutes. Crystal Johnson returns, devastating, and gently puts this track among the best of the nineties in hip-hop, singing for two minutes on the Patrice Rushen sample.

In the eighth track, Mobb Deep express their concerns about being arrested and taken to jail or in other words, make the up north trip, as most of the State's prisons are located north of New York City, in Upstate. Melodic sample from the Fatback Band interrupted abruptly by a booming bass and a metallic, dry and harsh midtempo drum. The guys recite three stanzas in another dark cut, flawless rapping. If the previous track matches Nas' "One Love", this is Raekwon's "Incarcerated Scarfaces", a tribute to imprisoned friends. Two extra verses make up one of the least considered tracks of this immortal record, the paranoid "Trife Life", where boys tell stories about how dangerous it's to meet a girl from another neighborhood. The beat consists of three excerpts from the same sample, Norman Connors' "You Are My Starship". An elegant piano introduces the track, so when Prodigy arrives, a midtempo drum, dry, lively, dirty and dusty pops up along with a booming bass, deep and powerful, and a sudden hypnotizing and disturbing sound that repeats itself every ten seconds, insinuating itself in a hidden way inside the track. The beat envelops you in its darkness, while Don P lulls you with his paranoia about meeting a girl in B'klyn and a slow, steady, dirty, spectacular flow. Simple hook, then energetic Havoc on the same subject with a great rap over an excellent beat.

Mobb Deep brought their entire crew to the studio on several occasions, drinking, smoking, eating, rapping and having fun with them, and every now and then the two invited their friends to go behind the mic to spit something even if they weren't rappers. It might have been suitable for a track describing how kids spend their time in clubs in the evenings, nevertheless, the final cut only retains the verses of Prodigy & Havoc, excluding those of friends, including Infamous Mobb and Big Noyd, and completely changes the theme of the track, describing how the boys must continue their criminal lifestyle in order to survive.

Track 10 opens with a skit on a night at the club, interrupted by the Queens youngstaz starting to mess, while there's a noise of something jumping from ear to ear. Prodigy enters the track with the same coolness, clarity, confidence, precision and brutality of a professional hitman, narrating the harshness and ruthlessness of street life in the projects he represents — the contract obliges me to declare that the artist is from Hempstead, Long Island. When Don P faces the track, from the shadows a sharp, rusty and menacing drum comes out, with a fresh and bouncy kick, followed by a faithful and brilliant bassline, powerful and deep, extraordinary, it almost looks like an organ loop playing in perpetuity in the dark.

Havoc's rhythm is eerie, deeply dark, cinematic, one of his most beautiful ever. The Prodigy's flow is relentless, unstoppable, untouchable, immaculate, it's hard to imagine how he could sound better than that. In the midst of the darkness, Grover Washington, Jr.'s sax ("Black Frost") emerges clearly standing out in the rhythm in an alarmist way, it's as if it wants to warn the listener that the track from here on out could get even harder than that. This is exactly what happens after the simple hook: the chorus has the great merit of continuing the momentum of the song and boasts two sounds you know, one is an excerpt from "Kitty With the Bent Frame" by Quincy Jones, you also hear it in "Shook Ones Pt. II", the other is the same noise present at the beginning of the track, which looks like the incessant falling raindrops while the main character is going to kill other victims in the movie "The Bone Collector". Havoc makes a spectacular entrance and delivers tough, hard bars as if his own life depended on it, his flow is dirty, tough, flowing, you can't stop it. On the last verse, Prodigy delivers one of his best verses. Fantastic track among the least observed in the group's discography.

For the "I could have been on a classic rap album too" series, we present "Right Back at You". Schott Free, the Loud A&R who's following the development of the Mobb Deep album, proposes to put on a track a young rapper from Staten Island who was part of his group, Hype da Madman. Hype goes to the studio and gets a verse in the track, nevertheless, Prodigy isn't completely satisfied with his contribution and asks Free to take the boy back to the studio and record another verse. Hype refuses to change the original verse and Free proposes to bring other guys from Staten Island in his place: Chef Raekwon & Ghostface Killah arrive.

It starts roughly like this: there's a lonely drum midtempo that wanders alone in the middle of the gloomy wood, the darkness darkens it and infuriates it, it's excessively harsh, hard, dry, metallic, brutal, suffocating, it takes your breath away. Then, a very heavy and grandiose bass falls, deep in the background and prelude to an evil event, in fact they arrive behind it some serious stabs of the violin, directly from Les McCann's "Benjamin", extraordinary jazz piece. The soundscape, a masterpiece, breathes just enough, Prodigy attacks it and destroys it in the first verse, again expressing his frustration in having to live the criminal life, placing faith exclusively in the urban tools invented by dr. Ingram, whose works are recalled on several occasions throughout the CD. Gangster hook of P, who together with his crew has met a rival who's now alone and no longer swaggering, they point their weapons at him and in the event that he decides to try and replicate, the fire would return at him ("right back at you").

In the second verse there's Havoc. He's telling you he's one of the best rappers (and producers) ever born, he's been telling you since the beginning of the album and he'll keep telling you to the end and for some of the later records, that's all. It really is one of the best in New York in the nineties. Havoc's verse is taken from his contribution on PHD (Blaq Poet & DJ Hot Day)'s "Set It" of the same period. The guy flips a line of Rakim and delivers hardcore, keeping the mood on the street and in the dark alleys, threatening your life in case you have the unhealthy idea of walking through the streets of his neighborhood. Hook shorter than before, then Ghostface Killah & Raekwon in back and forth, one of the most memorable moments of the genre. Big Noyd comes in full blast and kills the cut with the best verse, totally confident, inspired, energetic, hardcore, great effort.

Wu and Mobb Deep on a sensationally obscure Havoc beat: I don't know if you can go harder than that, I don't really know. Maybe if there was Sticky Fingaz. We're at that level anyway. Short prelude to choice number thirteen, there's a shooting and a friend of the boys is shot. You wish it was that easy, right? The twelfth track is a skit born after completing "Cradle to the Grave", it develops for less than a minute and sounds as essential as the previous songs. Mobb Deep want to create a skit in which a boy is shot during a shooting on a gloomy evening, to let the album breathe for a moment after a whole series of devastating songs, and also to make the listener understand how quickly one of your friends can be hit and die. Playing the role of the victim, Big Noyd, simply because he's one of three guys in the studio besides the two main rappers, there's nothing to discuss, genius isn't discussed.

"Cradle to the Grave" is yet another dark song of the record, Mobb Deep recites lyrics about how difficult it is to survive in the neighborhood through stories of kids being chased by the police and that have to hide after some crime, gangster stories, shoutouts to friends locked up in jail, and finally the story of an informant who must be left alive to keep the temperature low and not attract attention. The rhythm comes immediately, hard metallic dry midtempo drum, solid bass line, sample from Teddy Pendergrass' "And if I Had". Prodigy attacks from the first moment and exchanges short stanzas with Havoc, at first it seems like a back n forth — there was a hint in "Q.U. - Hectic" — but the track presents more structured verses as the minutes pass. It doesn't change the fact that the final result is absolutely dope. On the hook, which pays homage to Rakim, the boys again lament the ease and speed with which your friends can die in the ghetto. They are five minutes, but they slip away with sensational speed, thanks to an excellent beat and a silky-smooth rapping by the two protagonists. The rhythm left to breathe a bit at the end with the crackling sound of the vinyl is simply the icing on the cake of this track.

In "Drink Away the Pain (Situations)", Prodigy and Havoc describe alcohol addiction by comparing it to relationships with girls, while their guest Q-Tip goes off topic and fantasizes about a robbery committed alongside a number of designer clothing labels, Don P doesn't understand what's going on with the A Tribe Called Quest veteran's verse, but people like the stanza and in the end he convinces himself to keep it in the song, even though Mobb Deep are talking about completely different things. Third and last production of The Abstract: dirty bassline, deep, powerful, hard drum, metallic, dirty and dusty, dry and harsh, wonderfully dirty and dusty horns from The Headhunters' "I Remember I Made You Cry", excellent loop. Prodigy delivers energetically, smoothly, quickly, superlatively. Simple chorus, then Q-Tip goes off brilliantly in his way with a velvety, calm, smooth and flowing style, and Havoc completes the tune by destroying the song with an energetic verse of fine workmanship, dope flow.

Track number fifteen is the first single from this album, it's a sensational classic and the definitive rap song. "Shook Ones Pt. II". In a creative process in which new tracks take the place of those present in the demo with which Mobb Deep presented themselves to the label, this remix replaces the album's promotional single, "Shook Ones". Beautiful and unfortunately forgotten: on a gloomy and obscure production, Prodigy & Havoc bring out one of the nastiest and dirtiest songs of 1994. It's one of the first tracks recorded after signing with Loud Records and the first released with this label, and gets a lukewarm response. The construction of the remix isn't very clear. Havoc creates the rhythm and like so many others, he decides to eliminate it, but Prodigy makes him change his mind and saves the beat.

Dirty drum that kicks and boasts a snare that seems to mimic the sound of a stove going on. I've watched the "Shook Ones Pt. II" music video hundreds of times, but I've never noticed that there's this exact image in the first four seconds. Then comes an eerie, spooky and alienating sound from Quincy Jones' "Kitty With the Bent Frame", the drum keeps kicking and there's a hint of bass that's repelled by both the drum and that alarming loop from the Quincy Jones track, who seems to want to warn you that you're in danger, you're too far from home, and that you've to turn around and go back before it's too late. The bass manages to definitively enter the track, too powerful, too heavy, too deep to be contained for long, magical and brilliant, at the same time scary and fascinating, utterly eerie. The drum is forced to accept the dominant presence of the bass and somehow coexist with it for a few minutes.

The lyrics aren't as cold as in the original choice, but they compose what is still considered one of the hardest tracks ever: Mobb Deep turn against fake wannabe gangsters by putting one memorable line after another, one classic bar after another, every syllable uttered by Prodigy and Havoc is citable and they deliver them with a hardcore, dirty, incendiary, dope style. The killer hook is immense, sensational, one of the best of the decade. Many people dwell on what Prodigy did, but look what Havoc did. He too goes beyond perfection, lyrically he's at his best, his rapping is flawless, aggressive, hard, he pays homage to Nas' "NY State of Mind" quoting a couple of lines from that hymn towards the end and you don't even notice. Not to mention the bass, which hasn't been found for over fifteen years, until a guy on the internet finds out it's a sample of Herbie Hancock's "Jessica", from which Havoc slows down a piano to create the bass line, one of the most beautiful samples in history.

To complete the album, this beautiful extraordinary album, the guys literally tell you that the party is over. It's over. "Party Over". There are no multiple meanings. Mobb Deep go to clubs with friends and after a while they start arguing with other groups, so before they start messing up they warn their friends so that "no one is left back". Chorus on the haunting dark sample of Miles' "Lonely Fire", charleston, thundering deep bass, drum dirty dusty sour skinny, more contained rapping than usual by Prodigy, Havoc and Big Noyd rip the track, then Don P comes back and ends the party. Ty Nitty of Infamous Mobb delivers a couple of bars along with Big Noyd.

Second album by Mobb Deep. In a few years, Havoc & Prodigy have incredibly improved from the time of the Poetical Prophets and the time of the debut, and they managed to put themselves well above all the other artists on the circuit, flanking the "cream of the cream" of hip-hop, to remain faithful to a word to which the duo has shown several times to be fond of in these sixteen tracks. The lyrics are excellent to the point that they can be called some of the best gangsta / thug / street rap lyrics of the decade: the two interpreters connect stories of violence, murders, shootings, drugs, alcohol, girls, weapons, various threats, revenge, paranoia, escapes from the police, clubs, robberies, poverty, life in the ghetto, writing with a sharp, nihilistic and intelligent pen, using good vocabulary and their own distinctive slang and reciting the lyrics in the best way, with mind blowing delivery, spectacular flow and a fantastically detailed cinematic narrative style that entertains the listener from the first to the last word.

The production is one of the most beautiful ever. From the drums, to the bass lines, to the samples, everything is memorable and masterful, they are all among the best in hip-hop history. The dark soundscapes chosen by the boys are perfect for Mobb Deep rap. The record boasts a fascinating atmosphere, totally dark, very dark, very hard, lethal. The rapping of these guys — I also include the Wu, Nas, Q-Tip and especially the little considered Big Noyd, true secret weapon of the group, all at their finest — does everything possible to fuel this atmosphere, helping to maintain a raw, dirty, grubby, rusty, cold feeling that lasts all these sixty-seven minutes. It's not possible to forget Crystal Johnson, associate of Q-Tip, who makes "Temperature's Rising" an essential listen as well as fantastic.

The execution is inspired, confident, powerful and precise, with the two artists of the group to show a strong identity and a perfect chemistry between them. The music is almost entirely the work of Mobb Deep, both Havoc and Prodigy, but if it sounds so good, much of the credit goes to Q-Tip, who pretty much "musically cleans up" the whole project: the artist of A Tribe Called Quest finds himself on a sound that is different from the one made with his group and despite this, he manages to give a notable twist to the CD without altering or distorting the original sound which is still strongly rooted in the street, strengthening the drums, changing and modifying them, adding and removing other sound elements, and making the tracks more melodic, fresher, tighter, darker, meaner, more Mobb Deep.

Unstoppable, flawless, infallible, deeply fluid and intensely dope, the album is one of the darkest in hip-hop history and faithfully represents New York. 10/10.