Mobb Deep

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Essential Albums

  • Hell On Earth
    Hell On Earth
    Hell On Earth

    Mobb Deep’s 1995 sophomore album The Infamous put the duo on the map. But it was 1996’s Hell On Earth that cemented them as part of the vanguard of New York City-style street rap. With Hell On Earth, partners Havoc and the late Prodigy do for Queensbridge “thug life” what Martin Scorsese did for the Italian-American mob in his films—giving us a picture of a violent, high-stakes way of life that’s as bleak as it is action-packed. The album’s opening track, “Animal Instinct”, features a remorseful refrain—“Tired of livin’ life this way/Crime pay, but for how long/’Til you reach your downfall”—that made it clear Mobb Deep's “diamonds and guns” lifestyle had consequences. It’s no coincidence that the haunting track “G.O.D., Pt. III” features a sample of “Tony's Theme” from Scarface—a movie that, much like Hell On Earth, focuses on the meteoric rise and tragic fall that serves as the centre of so many crime stories. The cold, aggressive tone of Hell On Earth was inspired in part by real-life tragedies, as both members had lost close friends and family members in the mid-1990s. Adversity also came in the form of an unsolicited beef, with Mobb Deep being called out on 2Pac and the Outlawz’ incendiary “Hit ’Em Up”—a nasty diss track in which Pac pokes fun at Prodigy’s battle with sickle cell anaemia. Mobb Deep retaliated with Hell On Earth’s flagrant “Drop A Gem On ’Em”, released as tensions between East Coast and West Coast artists were reaching a fever pitch. “Drop A Gem On ’Em” made the rounds on local mixtapes and radio shows as a promo single, leading up to the album’s release. Thankfully, the beef stayed on wax—but Pac would be killed in Las Vegas in the fall of 1996, before he and the group could make amends. Beyond the drama, Hell On Earth is defined by the sinister soundscapes created by Havoc—the album’s sole producer—and the quotable verses delivered by Prodigy, then at the peak of his powers. His rhymes on cuts like “Still Shinin’”, “Nighttime Vultures” and the album’s title track put him in the conversation about who was the best rapper alive, alongside the likes of Nas and Biggie (JAY-Z wouldn’t enter the proverbial chat until a few years later). Appearances from fellow New York rap luminaries Nas, Raekwon and Method Man—not to mention cameos from Mobb Deep’s own Infamous Mobb family—make Hell On Earth a perfect snapshot of 1990s thug-rap, from the duo who coined the phrase “shook ones”.

  • The Infamous (25th Anniversary Expanded Edition)
    The Infamous (25th Anniversary Expanded Edition)
    The Infamous (25th Anniversary Expanded Edition)

    When gangsta rap first bloomed under Schoolly D, Ice-T, N.W.A. and others, it often painted street life in a heroic, triumphant light. The protagonists were larger than life, mythical, and had the women, luxury trappings and over-the-top stories to prove it; they were victors with spoils. Mobb Deep’s 1995 classic, The Infamous, shattered those fantasies. Throughout the album, released when Prodigy and Havoc were just 20 years old, the pair don’t come off like cinematic heroes; they seem like traumatised teens just trying to survive in Queensbridge—America’s largest housing project, right over the bridge from Manhattan’s old-money Upper East Side. The biggest single from Mobb’s first album, 1993’s largely forgotten Juvenile Hell, was the light-hearted sex jam “Hit It From the Back”. In contrast, on the chillingly paranoid Infamous standout “Trife Life”, Prodigy’s potential hook-up with an old fling in Brooklyn means bringing “gats for precaution” and five friends for “manpower” in case it’s a set-up. (He never even meets the girl; he and his crew end up fleeing because they saw a tinted-window car and couldn’t tell if it was “the enemy”.) A year earlier, Mobb’s Queensbridge compatriot Nas dropped the instant classic Illmatic, which found poetry and cinematic grace in the neighbourhood’s troubles; The Infamous did away with that pretense. Mobb’s bleak vision crystallises perfectly on first single “Shook Ones, Pt. II”. “Without the song…I don't know where I would be,” Havoc told Apple Music in a 2020 interview celebrating the album’s 25th anniversary. Havoc, who produced the bulk of the album in between some assists from mentor Q-Tip, slows down and distorts a Herbie Hancock piano snippet (1969’s “Jessica”) beyond recognition until it sounds like an out-of-tune horror movie guitar; Prodigy—who suffered from sickle cell anemia and died from complications in 2017—promising posers he’d “rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone” remains one of the most graphic, scarily specific rap lines committed to tape. “He was very vivid in telling his side of the story,” Havoc told Apple Music. “He was a larger-than-life figure.” The song redefined the group’s trajectory and thrust them to the forefront of a rejuvenated New York rap scene that emphasised gritty street realism. Nas and Wu-Tang Clan’s Raekwon and Ghostface, fresh off their own breakout releases, officially welcomed Mobb to the city’s new pantheon by delivering some of their best-ever bars on “Right Back at You” and “Eye for a Eye (Your Beef Is Mines)”—cold-blooded anthems about vengeance, to-the-end loyalty and making ruthless choices just to survive. “When you think of New York albums, you have to mention The Infamous—it was like the Olympics,” Raekwon told Apple Music about the album’s sessions. “‘You got to be ready—don’t fuck up!’ I just felt like I just had to just give them [something] good. Once they said, ‘Yo, solid,’ that's when I knew I passed the exam.” “I felt like I was going to school—it was a resurgence of New York,” Havoc added. “It was the beginning of a new era.” The Infamous’ nihilistic violence doesn’t let up until Q-Tip’s bouncy drum-and-saxophone loop opens up “Drink Away the Pain”; it seems like the album’s first moment of levity until you realise it’s an ode to alcohol's palliative abilities. “When you listen to it, listen to it at first and enjoy,” Tip told Apple Music of the album. “Then think about it from the perspective of a young black man who's still a teenager who's forced to step into the shoes of manhood in a wild environment to be able to just survive and provide for his young black family. [If] it’s either going to be me or you, if I'm drawing first and you draw last, guess what? I win.”

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About Mobb Deep

Mobb Deep's murky, graphically detailed hip-hop made them one of the 1990s' most celebrated acts, every bit the artistic peer of stars like Notorious B.I.G. and Wu-Tang Clan. Havoc and Prodigy grew up in the New York borough of Queens but met as teenagers at Manhattan's High School of Art and Design in the early '90s, bonding through music. Their raw, unpolished debut, Juvenile Hell, got their feet in the door, but 1995's follow-up, The Infamous, forged their distinctive identity. Havoc produced haunting, suffocating sounds, and Prodigy delivered relentlessly violent, nihilistic rhymes with stone-faced intensity and inventive slang. Cinematic street credos like "Shook Ones (Pt. II)" made them a symbol of the toughness of East Coast hip-hop's golden era. Subsequent years saw beefs with 2Pac, Jay-Z and Nas, but Mobb Deep never let up creatively: Hell On Earth (1996) was even more venomous than its predecessor, and Murda Muzik (1999) featured the canonical "Quiet Storm (Remix)" with Lil Kim. In 2006, the duo signed to G-Unit Records and released Blood Money, scoring assists from 50 Cent while adding sheen to their cavernous sound. They closed the decade on hiatus due to personal issues, releasing music individually until reuniting for 2014's double-disc, The Infamous Mobb Deep. Their eighth and final album was a completionist's bliss—17 new songs revived their signature street Darwinism, and a batch of rare and unreleased 1994 sessions from the aforementioned The Infamous satisfied nostalgists. Prodigy died in 2017 after lifelong struggles with sickle cell anemia, and Havoc told Apple Music it feels "incomplete" to reminisce without his partner. But as acts like Roc Marciano and Griselda emulate the creepy melodies and unflinching menace that Hav and P pioneered, Mobb Deep live on.

FROM
Queens, NY, United States
FORMED
1993
GENRE
Hip-Hop/Rap

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