Those records became the foundation of what became the Mobb Deep sound, a grimy blend of atmospherics, sharp beats, and jazz hooks buried in the mix, sounding like they were coming from the next room or a passing car. After Budd Johnson’s death in 1984, it was Prodigy who inherited his massive collection of records, collected during world tours for decades. While Prodigy and Havoc had been teaching themselves to make beats for a while before making Juvenile Hell, they only ended up with three of their own tracks on the album, which Prodigy dismissed as “amateur.” So they buckled down and tightened up their game, taking advantage of their musical legacies, with Havoc the son of a DJ and Prodigy the grandson of a low-key jazz legend named Budd Johnson, who recorded with everyone from Earl “Fatha” Hines, Quincy Jones, and Ruth Brown. We were just kids, we were still learning, but there are no excuses in this business. Our excuse was that we were only 17 when we recorded the album. They had also “learned a serious lesson,” Prodigy noted in My Infamous Life, “We had to take songwriting and producing seriously or we wouldn’t get another chance. Still, they had developed a cult following off of “Hit It From The Back” and its lascivious video and had enough cred to get a meeting with Loud Records, then just four cubicles in the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center. After keeping Juvenile Hell from release for a year, 4th & Broadway dropped the group “quick-fast” after it only sold a little more than 20,000 copies. “Nas was an incredible songwriter and the beats he chose were just as good,” Prodigy remembered, “It made us want to hurry home and start working on a new album.” First they needed a new label. To add insult to injury, during Mobb Deep’s in-store appearance in Washington, DC, the song “ Halftime ” came on over the PA. “That really overshadowed our feeble attempt at an album,” Prodigy reflected in his 2011 memoir, My Infamous Life, “ Illmatic was, and still is one of the best rap albums ever.”

Add in a dash of humiliation and it becomes more like a cattle prod.Īfter releasing their debut album, 1993’s Juvenile Hell , Albert “Prodigy” Johnson and Kejuan “Havoc” Muchita of the rap duo Mobb Deep were on a cross country promotional tour just as Nas, who was also based in the Queensbridge projects in Queens, New York, dropped Illmatic. Mobb Deep The Infamous Advert Billboard June 17, 1995įailure can be a great motivator.

Mobb deep 1995