Photo: Courtesy of Mob Deep.
It is not an uncommon entrapment for rappers to devote much of their careers to matching the success of their earliest efforts.
Each Nas album comes with unfair comparisons to “Illmatic.” All nine members of the Wu-Tang Clan have had trouble chasing the critical acclaim of “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).”
As the 20th anniversary of both of those classic albums passes, one group has found an interesting way to keep the conversation about its new music close to its most prized opus.
This month, Mobb Deep, a duo from New York, reissues its landmark album, “The Infamous” in a package with a full-length disc of new material.
Whether the new content is good doesn’t matter.
What’s most important is making sure the current generation of hip-hop fans is able to experience the 1995 album that helped level the playing field for East Coast hip hop.
In an era when “The Chronic,” “Doggystyle” and its West Coast, funk-driven kin ruled the airwaves temporarily, Mobb Deep brought a pot of New York-style gumbo to the rap table.
The success of “The Infamous” should be attributed to the distribution of labor between the duo. Prodigy did heavy lifting with the rhymes. Havoc ran the beats.
In the wake of “Illmatic,” Prodigy used his gritty insight to bring a new voice to the discipline of honest storytelling Nas pioneered before him. Nas’ debut a year earlier was a coming-of-age story set to boom-bap backdrops for the very first time. Prodigy’s narrative was very different.
His voice was as calm, and his rhyme patterns were as varied as Nas. The words, however, were hardcore.
“I got you stuck off the realness,” he boasts in the opening line of lead single “Shook Ones Pt. II.”
Keeping with the tone of the album, Prodigy sticks his chest out for threats, such as “Rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone.” Much like the blaring horns that begin in its intro, the track stands as an alert.
Havoc, the man responsible for ringing the alarm, patterned his ear for grimy, murky, sounds after Wu-Tang Clan’s The RZA. His drums that snapped like crisp vegetables to complement his samples. Melodic jazz fusion compositions from Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock and Norman Connors effortlessly floated across thumping kicks, snares and static hi-hat patterns.
Not many artists, regardless of age or genre, can claim responsibility for a more cohesive set of songs.
As much as “The Infamous” was a gift in Mobb Deep’s discography early on, it has been a curse ever since. Among rap acts with albums deemed classic, Mobb seems more consumed with the idea of outdoing itself than others. Countless efforts from Hav and P reference “The Infamous” by title, artwork and content. All of them fell short to measuring up to the magic that happened in 1995.
You know what they say — “If you can’t beat your best album, just sell your new album as a bonus disc for your best album.”
— Jared Boyd
jlboyd3@go.olemiss.edu
