![]() The memoir follows Mobb’s early career to its resurgence in 2006 after 50 Cent signs his heroes to G-Unit Records. Mobb Deep is like french onion soup - if you take the beef out of it, there’s not much left. Why, the reader must wonder, does Prodigy care so much about fighting? The answer is that it’s his art: his verses have always been about threat, violence, bravado, menace, self-protection. Reading this intense memoir, one has to wonder what all the beef is really about, and sometimes Prodigy trips up his own logic, as when he mocks Def Squad rapper Keith Murray for getting all twisted about an insult in a Mobb track … and then gets himself all twisted about an insult in a Jay-Z track (this would eventually lead to Jay’s “Takeover”, unfortunately for Prodigy and Nas the most famous beef song of all time). He meets the up-and-coming Cam’ron, but is irritated when Cam’ron calls his home phone, because “I didn’t like new people trying to be cool with me”. He wasn’t impressed by Jay-Z at all: “he was copying our style”. Mobb Deep always had a rep for being “real” (you may remember how David Shields’ literary study Reality Hunger enthused over Prodigy’s delivery of the line “I got you stuck on the realness” from “Shook Ones Part II”), and from the beginning it was Prodigy’s favorite sport to point out all the other rappers who couldn’t back up their talk and make them defend their ground. A remarkable percentage of this book is concerned with beefing, an art that Prodigy takes very seriously. My Infamous Life is Prodigy’s record of a lifetime of beef, betrayal, victory and jealousy, all in a prose voice as taciturn and elegant as any Mobb Deep track. Mobb Deep fans, all of them.īut the feeling wasn’t always mutual. from Brooklyn, Mase, Big L and Cam’ron from Manhattan, Big Pun and Fat Joe from the Bronx, DMX and the L.O.X. The new gangsta sound spread through New York City, where the Queens rappers were joined by Jay-Z, Biggie Smalls, Lil Kim, Busta Rhymes and M.O.P. They were unknowingly at the vanguard of hiphop’s greatest age, born in Queensbridge and the Lefrak projects, where Prodigy crossed paths with A Tribe Called Quest, Nas, the Large Professor, Onyx, Cormega and Capone-N-Noriega. He and his high school buddy Havoc were still teenagers in 1993 when they put out the first Mobb Deep album. This gangsta rapper has some major musical roots.īut he struggled as a kid with sickle-cell anemia, a painful condition that helped him develop a stoic sense of life and a fervent, straight-edged drive. Prodigy’s mother Frances Collins was a replacement member of the 60s girl group the Crystals. His grandmother Bernice Johnson created an influential dance school in Jamaica, Queens and hung out with Lena Horne, Ben Vereen and Diana Ross. His grandfather Budd Johnson was a bebop saxophonist who worked with Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, Ruth Brown, Gil Evans, Count Basie and Quincy Jones. My Infamous Life, the new memoir by classic rapper Prodigy of Mobb Deep, kicks off with a surprise: Albert “Prodigy” Johnson carries an amazing musical legacy in his genes. ![]()
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