Milestones: The Infamous by Mobb Deep
Ready for the spearhead of hardcore hip-hop from the East Coast? If not, move along; there’s nothing here for you to see. If so, take cover. Mobb Deep are not in the mood for jokes.
“There’s a war going on outside no one is save from…” Which rap fan hasn’t been stopped by civilian cops for blasting The Infamous in January at night with eight degrees below, elbows out, and hood up in Polo?
Not Tocotronic—but there’s only cool or uncool and how you feel. In 1995 with Mobb Deep in the tape deck—CD changers were only for wax jacket softies back then—as a suburban crocodile, you didn’t give a fuck about them and the world and tried to feel cool—for them. “We livin’ this til the day that we die / survival of the fit only the strong survive.”
The very young beatmaker Havoc built from bone-dry driving drum patterns, deep basses, and minimalist-melancholic samples a frightening concrete desert sound, over which his equally fresh rhyme partner Prodigy perfectly rolled out his intense-ignorant ghetto lyrics. “Queensbridge, we’re on the scene bitch.”
The two Mobbsters met at a high school for the arts (by the way, the same one attended by designer Calvin Klein and later spat out rap colleagues like Pharoahe Monch, Fabolous, or Ferg) does little to diminish their realness: both grew up in Queensbridge, Prodigy and Havoc know the hood firsthand, and they bring the lyrical and musical skills to convey what’s going on there.
After Illmatic, within a New York minute, the second milestone from these small Big Apple projects crashed into American youth culture like a massive moon. And similar to colleague Nas, Mobb Deep wouldn’t win an arm-wrestling match with the Hells Angels either, but their analyses from the neighborhood hit the bullseye sharply like African American crack addicts.
“Meanwhile, back in Queens, the realness is foundation/If I die I couldn’t choose a better location/When the slugs penetrate you feel a burning sensation/Getting closer to God in a tight situation/Now, take these words home and think it through/Or the next rhyme I write might be about you.”
“Shook Ones, Pt. II,” Havoc’s seventies sample salad from Quincy Jones’ “Kitty With the Bent Frame,” “Jessica” by Herbie Hancock, and “Dirty Feet” by the Daly Wilson Big Band, nods its way through the speakers as Mobb Deep’s career blueprint. With this hood-hop in their ears and Timberland boots on their roots, shirts, and victims of all classes march into any hopeless battle—uncompromising, to go down with flying colors. The main thing is to keep it real. Prodigy knows the deal, as he is considered a studio gangster after various scuffles.
It is bad for credibility with the really tough guys but good for the self-confidence and assertiveness of everyone else. While hypnotist Havoc loops the head into the realm of neck stiffness with the ton-heavy “Eye for an Eye,” and Raekwon stays in memory with “drinks bears, the German ones,” Prodigy goes on one lyrical drive-by after another on “Trife Life,” “Q.U. - Hectic,” and “Right Back at You.”
Positive-melodic breathers from the boom bap truck are sold on The Infamous by ATCQ legend Q-Tip as co-producer of tracks like “Temperature’s Rising” or “Give Up the Goods (Just Step).” Even between the canyons of buildings, the sun seemed to shine occasionally around 1995.
At least for a year or two: on the even more intense, uncompromising follow-up album Hell On Earth, the last rays disappeared behind the dark clouds of the 2Pac East Coast/West Coast beef. Prodigy’s earlier “Shook Ones, Pt. II” self-analysis sounds like a prophecy: “I’m only nineteen, but my mind is old/And when the things get for real my warm heart turns cold/Another nigga deceased, another story gets told.”
Standout (★★★★½)