Happy 25th Anniversary to Mobb Deep’s second studio album The Infamous, originally released April 25, 1995.
“Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems—but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems incredible.”
Lifted from Salman Rushdie’s 1981 Booker Prize winning novel Midnight’s Children, the above quote immediately comes to mind, as I conjure my own vivid, nostalgic memories of Mobb Deep’s landmark LP The Infamous, twenty-five years after hearing it for the first time.
Back in the spring of 1995, Havoc and the late Prodigy’s provocatively raw portrait of Queensbridge street life rocked my nerves and confounded my 17 year-old brain. As an uninformed spectator to the duo’s unabashedly brazen brand of storytelling, it was tough for me—and I suspect for many others—to discern fact from fiction, experience from embellishment.
Mobb Deep’s audacious tales and ruminations did in fact sound almost too incredible to believe. However, as I’ve delved deeper into the group’s background, listening to and reading their comments about the all-too-authentic inspiration for the album, I’ve had ample opportunity to digest, evaluate and continually reevaluate The Infamous. And subsequently, Mobb Deep’s stark narrative has become more fathomable, and the line of perception that once resided somewhere between fantasy and reality now cuts right through the latter.
While the recorded output of Mobb Deep dates back to 1992 when they released their debut single “Peer Pressure,” the group’s roots extend further back when you consider the history of their native stomping grounds: Queensbridge, New York. The largest public housing complex ever erected on North American soil, Queensbridge Houses is home to just shy of 7,000 predominantly African-American and Latino lower-income residents. And while violent crime has steadily declined in the neighborhood in recent years—consistent with reductions across the rest of New York City since Rudy Giuliani’s eight-year mayoral term concluded in 2001—Queensbridge’s notoriety for drug trafficking persists to this day. As evidenced by recent drug sweeps conducted across the projects, the narcotics game may have been compromised in the aftermath of Giuliani’s strong-arm approach to crime reduction, but it certainly hasn’t disappeared.
Arguably Queensbridge’s most visible legacy, however, is its role as a creative wellspring for some of hip-hop’s most revered artists of all time. Founded by producer extraordinaire and Queensbridge native Marley Marl in the mid-1980s, The Juice Crew collective is deservedly credited for first establishing Queensbridge as a powerful hip-hop hotbed. Comprised of Queensbridge-bred emcees Craig G, Intelligent Hoodlum (a.k.a. Tragedy Khadafi), MC Shan, and Roxanne Shanté, along with other New York City microphone luminaries such as Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, Grand Daddy I.U., Kool G Rap and Masta Ace, among others, The Juice Crew was hip-hop’s first-ever supergroup, establishing the standard for the likes of Native Tongues, the Wu-Tang Clan, Boot Camp Clik, Hieroglyphics and a host of other squads. While the classic 1988 posse cut “The Symphony” is The Juice Crew’s most instantly recognizable tune, a song released by one of The Juice Crew’s members two years earlier firmly immortalized Queensbridge’s rightful place within the hip-hop landscape.
Years before the so-called East Coast vs. West Coast feuds plagued hip-hop and indirectly (or directly, according to some) precipitated the untimely deaths of two legendary emcee heavyweights, MC Shan’s 1986 single “The Bridge” inadvertently fueled the cross-borough, battle rap rivalry known as “The Bridge Wars.” Although MC Shan never explicitly declares that Queensbridge is the birthplace of hip-hop on the Marley Marl produced track, KRS-One and his Bronx-based group Boogie Down Productions (BDP) interpreted it as such and took immediate offense.
BDP released their rebuttal, “South Bronx,” shortly thereafter. The song directly addresses MC Shan and aims to reinforce the Bronx as hip-hop’s original breeding grounds with biting lyrics such as “So you think that hip-hop had its start out in Queensbridge / If you pop that junk up in the Bronx you might not live.” Tempers flared and the rhyme sparring continued into the following year, with MC Shan releasing “Kill That Noise” in response to “South Bronx,” and BDP following suit once again with the self-explanatory “The Bridge is Over.”
Over the next few years, both crews would volley assaults and insinuations back and forth on record, culminating with KRS-One’s Juice Crew-bashing reference (“I’m not down with a juice-crew”) on “Blackman in Effect” from BDP’s 1990’s Edutainment LP. Admirably, and perhaps remarkably considering more recent inter-crew conflicts, the antagonism between The Juice Crew and BDP remained exclusively lyrical in nature, and never veered into the physical. The battle’s epilogue is a happy and harmonious one, as Marley Marl and KRS-One formally squashed the beef when they collaborated on 2007’s Hip-Hop Lives album, a partnership that would have been decried as sacrilegious twenty years prior.
The Bridge Wars engendered some of the most memorable hip-hop songs ever and indulged fans with one of the most entertaining microphone clashes in history. But more importantly, the Bridge Wars transformed Queensbridge from an obscure locale overlooked by many to a prominent force to be reckoned with in hip-hop. In the 2014 Time Is Illmatic documentary film, Queensbridge native Nas reflects on the importance of MC Shan’s “The Bridge,” explaining that “You meet people and tell ‘em where you from, most people never heard of this place. That song changed everything.” Queensbridge’s newfound visibility and bolstered reputation made it possible for the next generation of emcees like Nas to develop their rhyming careers with the benefits of credibility and by extension, confidence.
Speaking of Nas, what The Juice Crew achieved for Queensbridge in the ‘80s, he reinvented and revitalized in the mid-‘90s. Universally considered one of the greatest—if not the greatest—debut hip-hop albums ever, 1994’s Illmatic heralded the official arrival of a prodigiously gifted rhyme superstar-to-be in Nas. Beyond introducing his lyrical dexterity and penetrating flow to a much broader audience than his previous guest spots on others’ records had garnered, Illmatic’s ten song suite redefined the Queensbridge sound altogether. Combining narratives of gritty hyper-realism with exquisitely crafted sonic backdrops, Illmatic is street poetry in its most eloquent and evocative form. A perfect hybrid of the visceral and intellectual, the album set the creative bar sky-high for other aspiring emcees, both inside and outside of Queensbridge. One of those acts influenced and motivated by Nas and Illmatic was Mobb Deep.
Originally known by their more alliterative moniker, the Poetical Prophets, and featured in The Source magazine’s “Unsigned Hype” column in 1991, Mobb Deep was reeling from the critical and commercial disappointment of their 1993 debut album Juvenile Hell, by the time that Illmatic hit stores in the spring of 1994. In a 2013 interview, Prodigy confesses that “You could just hear the difference between [Nas’] lyrics and beats and ours. That’s when we started putting our heart and soul into the music and really trying to make something that could last.” Juvenile Hell proved an apropos title, on account of its unpolished songs that bordered on the amateurish. The dynamic duo would more than make up for this misstep with their follow-up effort though. Would they ever.
While the music industry has traditionally runneth over with acts who milk their one-trick pony shtick for all it’s worth (I’ll refrain from naming any names, to keep this affair a positive one), there are quite a few artists who place a heavy premium on continual, gimmick-free creative reinvention and artistic rebirth—predicated upon learning from past experiences and embarking upon new musical paths. With respect to Mobb Deep’s night-and-day transition from Juvenile Hell to The Infamous, never before has a hip-hop act harnessed its ambition so effectively and stepped up its game so dramatically from album to album.
The Infamous was a giant leap forward for the tandem, reflecting a newfound lyrical maturity, magnetic presence, and sonic depth that was remarkable to behold and endlessly gratifying to listen to. To even the most casual listener, it was obvious that Havoc and Prodigy had returned to square one, put in a substantial amount of work, and in the end, delivered a career-redeeming magnum opus.
If you hadn’t already surmised, your author is an insatiable music obsessive with a vast collection of vinyl, CD, and digital recordings. Always on the prowl for new music, I’ve always been the guy who arrives at the local record store the moment they unlock their doors on the mornings of “New Release Tuesdays” and more recently, “New Music Fridays.” In all of the years I’ve spent cultivating my music library, seldom have I looked forward to an album as anxiously as I awaited The Infamous. The first two singles, unveiled during the months leading up to the album’s release, were most definitely to blame for stoking my excitement.
Toward the end of 1994, “Shook Ones, Pt. II” was released and from the opening verse, I was unquestionably “stuck off the realness” as Prodigy declared. Not for the faint of heart, the single finds Havoc and Prodigy staking claim to their streets through a vividly stark depiction of Queensbridge life. The single is haunting to say the least, and made more so by the ominous piano sample (Herbie Hancock’s “Jessica”) that loops throughout, perfectly evoking the impending sense of doom. Released five months later, second single “Survival of the Fittest” is even darker and more foreboding than its precursor. Atop a similar, but ingeniously slowed-down piano loop (The Barry Harris Trio with Al Cohn’s “Skylark”), the duo explores how Darwinian instincts of self-protection are imperative for surviving the myriad dangers and temptations of their neighborhood. Not mere album teasers, “Shook Ones, Pt. II” and “Survival of the Fittest” were instant, undeniable classics. And they’ve aged rather well in the quarter-century since their arrival.
My only concern about the forthcoming LP, at the time, was that it seemed highly unlikely that the rest of the album could even remotely measure up to these superb lead singles. Thankfully, my fears proved unwarranted.
When I first heard The Infamous in its entirety, I was admittedly dumbfounded by how thoroughly brilliant it was, from beginning through the middle to the end. Mind you, the group’s nihilistic, autobiographical narrative was jarring upon initial and repeated listens, but I approached the album’s bleak content as objectively as I possibly could. And in doing so, I was able to appreciate the fact that Mobb Deep neither sugarcoats nor romanticizes their lifestyle. Instead, they simply—and unapologetically—document the life of poverty, crime and violence that they and their Queensbridge brethren endure day in and day out, in chilling detail. In a 2011 Dazed magazine interview, Havoc explained “I believe that [listeners] were attracted to the [album’s] honesty, more than anything. You felt the honesty from the music, so naturally people are going to be attracted to something that is honest.” Indeed, the group’s uncompromising candor is the driving force behind the album’s greatness.
If you listen closely enough, amidst the darkness and drama, you can detect the underlying theme of regret-filled resignation throughout the course of the album’s sixteen tracks. Only 20 years old when they completed the album, Havoc and Prodigy’s voices are marked by a world-weariness that belies their age, but reflects the burdensome weight of their environment. On “Up North Trip,” Prodigy concedes, “Then I pause…and ask God why / Did he put me on this Earth, just so I could die / I sit back and build on, all the things I did wrong / Why I’m still breathin,’ and all my friends gone / I try not to dwell on the subject for a while / Cause I might get stuck in this corrupt lifestyle / But my, heart pumps foul blood through my arteries / And I can’t turn it back it’s a part of me / Too late for cryin,’ I’m a grown man strugglin’ / To reach the next level of life, without fumblin’ / Down to foldin’ I got no shoulder to lean on but my own / All alone in this danger zone / Time waits for no man, the streets grow worse.”
In the same vein of self-contemplation, on “Shook Ones, Pt. II,” Prodigy admits “Sometimes I wonder do I deserve to live / Or am I going to burn in hell for all the things I did.” Heavy stuff, for sure. It’s as if Mobb Deep regrettably acknowledge that the fairytale-free life they lead is a lethal one with a predestined conclusion, but the powerful stranglehold that their neighborhood wields over them makes it damn near impossible to escape to greener, safer pastures.
The one track that represents a bit of an anomaly with respect to the album’s core thematic threads is the metaphorical “Drink Away the Pain,” which explores the dangers of addiction in its various incarnations. Havoc and Prodigy’s verses revolve around the personification of alcohol dependency in the form of a destructive woman they’re infatuated with. Guest emcee and the duo’s early career mentor Q-Tip, who also produced the song, takes the clever motif an intriguing step further by describing a fictional heist facilitated by anthropomorphized fashion brands (sample verse: “Diesel drove the Beemer, the hatchback of course / Nautica’ll navigate to keep us on course”). In a 2015 WatchLOUD interview, Prodigy explains that “[Q-Tip’s verse] was ill, he made it different, you know what I’m saying? That was some super-abstract, creative shit. It made me, as a writer, look at it in different ways. How you can approach a verse in different, creative ways. Definitely opened up our creativity.” A welcome, more playful diversion from the gravity and menace that pervade the rest of the album, “Drink Away the Pain” is a standout tune on an album with standouts in abundance.
Largely self-produced by Mobb Deep, The Infamous is an expertly and meticulously crafted sonic tour de force. More to the point, few albums I’ve ever heard sound this good. The fusing of eerie strings and pianos with crisp, thumping beats provides an enveloping, cinematic-like atmosphere of dread and despair, the perfect backdrop for Havoc and Prodigy’s harrowing tales of stress and strife. A steady stream of jazz and soul samples—many culled from digging among lesser known, more obscure records—are incorporated throughout, to glorious effect. Speaking with Complex in 2011, Havoc explained how family musical influences informed the selection of samples for the album: “[As far as records that were sampled] they just came from different places. My father was a DJ back in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, so he had a lot of records. My grandmother had a lot of records in her house too. And Prodigy had a lot of records because his grandfather was a jazz musician, so he had all sorts of jazz records. P’s grandfather was named Bud Johnson and he was cool with Quincy Jones, so there was a lot of Quincy Jones albums amongst P’s grandfather’s collection. So that’s where you get the Quincy Jones sample [of ‘Kitty With the Bent Frame’] on (‘Q.U. Hectic’).”
Other sample-driven highlights include “Give Up the Goods (Just Step)” (which samples Esther Phillips’ “That’s All Right with Me,” also recently heard on J. Cole’s “St. Tropez”), “Up North Trip” (The Spinners’ “I’m Tired of Giving”), “Temperature’s Rising” (Patrice Rushen’s “Where There is Love”), and “Trife Life” (Norman Connors’ “You Are My Starship”).
The Infamous is predominantly a Mobb Deep orchestrated effort, though a few all-star guest appearances definitely enhance the affair. Raekwon appears twice, on “Eye for An Eye (Your Beef is Mines)” with Nas and “Right Back at You” with his Wu-Tang compatriot Ghostface Killah. Fellow Queensbridge emcee Big Noyd also features on the latter track, as well as “Give Up the Goods (Just Step)” and album closer “Party Over.” His aforementioned verse on “Drink Away the Pain” aside, Q-Tip’s presence is most profoundly observed across the album’s stirring sonic tapestry. Listed in the production credits as The Abstract, Q-Tip masterfully commanded the decks for three of the album’s more impressive compositions: “Give Up the Goods (Just Step),” “Temperature’s Rising” and “Drink Away the Pain.” His influence transcended these specific tracks, however, as Prodigy explained to Complex: “[Q-Tip] helped bring us in and his production is crazy, so we brought him in to consult for us. He executive produced the album, basically. He helped us out with drum patterns, he helped us tighten our sound up. Most of the songs on there—but not all of them—had his input. Like, ‘Yo, I think y’all should do this to this, add a little snare here, or a delay there.’ Little things like that. It just came natural.” Without question, the end result showcases what truly proved a dream collaboration in the studio.
Most hip-hop heads define the genre’s Golden Age as roughly spanning from 1987 to 1992, give or take a year on the front or back ends. But the mid-1990s should rightly be considered hip-hop’s second Golden Age or perhaps, more accurately, its Silver Age. Granted, how we classify the post Golden Age era is arbitrary and ultimately unimportant. What is important is that the middle years of the decade from 1994 to 1996 generated a handful of LP masterpieces, including, but certainly not limited to, Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers, 93 ‘til Infinity, Midnight Marauders, Doggystyle, Illmatic, Ready to Die, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, Resurrection, Do You Want More?!!!??!, and Stakes is High. And of course, The Infamous.
Some music pundits have suggested that Mobb Deep’s sophomore LP helped to usher in a mid-‘90s renaissance for East Coast hip-hop. Though from my perspective, East Coast hip-hop was always consistently strong and never in dire need of a revival, even with the critical and commercial ascendance of artists representing the opposite coast. No matter. What The Infamous did achieve was to introduce a new, grittier, more hardcore style that countless acts aspired to emulate throughout the latter part of the ‘90s into the new century. Moreover, The Infamous solidified and expanded Queensbridge’s pivotal place in the rich annals of hip-hop.
Recently, some journalists have suggested that the Bridge—as in the Queensbridge rap movement—has gradually faded toward obscurity and is now indeed over, for a handful of plausible reasons. Whether or not the Bridge is in fact over, which frankly seems like an overly pessimistic assertion, Queensbridge hip-hop’s greatness will live on for eternity through its most prized artifacts like MC Shan’s “The Bridge,” Nas’ Illmatic, and Mobb Deep’s The Infamous.
LISTEN: