Why Prodigy Was A Once-In-A-Generation Rapper – Complex

The most violent of the violentest crimes we give life to If these Queensbridge kids dont like you We bring drama of the worst kind to enemies Your first time will be your last Earth memories Its only your own fault, I gave you fair warning: Beware Of killer kids who dont careShook Ones Pt. 1

He put his lifetime in between the papers lines, but not autobiographically, as most rappers of renown do. Instead, Albert Prodigy Johnson pioneered an extraordinary rap flow full of cold-eyed nihilism that presented death as the only meaningful framework for life.

Prodigywho passed away in Las Vegas this week at age 42was one of hip-hops Three Ps. Along with the late Sean Price (who died in his sleep at 43 in 2015) and Pharrell Williams, he was one of few rappers whose name could be filed down to a single letter. Butunlike Price, who needed his first name to accentuate himself, or Williams, who characterized his name with modifiers (like Skateboard P)Prodigy was simply P. And with good reason. Even as half of one of the genres most vaunted duos (along with Kejuan Havoc Muchita), P was a singular character in hip-hop, a rule-breaker and world-creator, weary and grounded even as he threatened to stab your brain with your nose bone.

The legacy of Prodigyand by extension Mobb Deepmay be a hip-hop case of Seinfeld is Unfunny; an act whose ethos has been so influential that looking back in an archival sense robs listeners of the first night chills that came in on those Queensbridge winds.

Its almost impossible to recapture the impact of Prodigy and Havoc, donned in Hennessy football jerseys, without realizing that less than a decade earlier, at a a time when professionally recorded rap was still novel and change was slow, Heavy D & The Boyz were dancing in Coca-Cola sweatshirts as a representation of an affront to the status quo. But Mobb Deep werent dancingthey were the stone-faced super-predators that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton would decry the next year: They are not just gangs of kids anymore, shed say at Keene State College in New Hampshire. They are often the kinds of kids that are called super-predatorsno conscience, no empathy.

I got you stuck off the realness; we be the Infamous. You heard of us: Official Queensbridge murderersShook Ones, Pt. II

Ps opening lines were things of depraved beauty. Take the start of Shook Ones, or the beginning of its more well-known sibling, Shook Ones, Pt. II, both quoted above. These are not threats, but declarations of self as fair warning from real n-ggas who aint got no feelings. These words represent what was important to him; this is how he wanted to introduce himself as a greeting: Hello, my name is P. I am only 19, but my mind is old. I represent death, violence, and the Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing development in North America. This is the start of your ending.

It was as if he was saying to other rappers what Bane said to Batman in The Dark Knight Rises: Oh, you think darkness is your ally? But your merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by itI didnt see the light until I was already a man. By then it was nothing to me but blinding. He was Nietzsche in construction Timberlands and an Army-certified suit; New Yorks harshest Darwinist.

Ps bleakness wasnt just depressed ghetto existentialism expressed via hyperbole, but something in his bloodliterally. His lifelong war against sickle cell disease made death a more pressing inevitability for him than most and rooted his worldview that only the strong survive, but also that the strong would also perish. (See: Infamous Prelude.) He would drink away his pain with Ease-Us Jesus (E&J brandy) or Dainy (thats St. Ides and Pina Colada champales in dunn language), but not without pouring some out for the fallen and sharing the bottle with the standing. In his early rhymes as part of Mobb Deepwhich were separate from his Michael Jackson dancing days, his stint as Jive Records artist LordT (The Golden Child), or his time as part of Poetical Prophetstheres nary a verse without the mention of the tightly wrought struggle between living and dying. Beyond simply detailing crime, Prodigy showcased depression, dysfunction, and self-medication.

You just complain cause you stressed N-gga, my pains in the flesh And through the years, that pain became my friend, sedated With morphine as a little kid I built a tolerance for drugs Addicted to the medicine You Can Never Feel My Pain

No one did more to present NYC housing projects as a world within in a world than Mobb Deepnot the Wu-Tang Clan, not M.O.P., not the Boot Camp Clik. And no one did as much to present the Queensbridge as a land of its own rules and morality as Hempstead, Long Islands Prodigy. Not even Nas with his clear-eyed insight, Tragedy with his hard-earned wisdom, nor Capone with his in-the-trenches war reportage ever came close depicting the defeatist maladjustment borne of poverty and closed quarters the way that P did. Not even Havoc, with his trife life and times and proximity to his partner, could capture the front lines of hell on Earth like Prodigy. There are no bars to depict thisone simply has to give over to the experience of listening to the H.N.I.C.s bleak worldview at length.

If there was joy to be found in Ps music, it was in his literary specificity and the way he viewed the world as an enemy and other rappers as nuisances. His appearance on Hell On Earths Nightttime Vultures exemplifies both strengths. He begins by awakening and recounting the prior nights violence: Bullets flew, I had to drag my man behind a wall/Left a wet trail, delivered these slugs like air mail/Directly at the cat that made my man blood spill. But then hes quickly on to stoically boasting about his rap prowess:

I kick that '98 shit for your ears to list N-gga P way ahead of his time, surpass kids Kickin' rhymes that's true lies Let me break 'em down to size, minimize they air time After this you never will go back to that which Sit back an' write half-ass shit At last, the official taking out the artificial Let me relieve you, replace that shit with some lethal Mobb, remember the name it's been along Yall n-gga's shook to death from the first fuckin song

Beef with other rappers seemed to be in Prodigys DNAfrom Keith Murray to 2Pac to Saigon and Jay-Z, to spats with Noreagea, Nas, and eventually Havoc, Prodigy spent his careers enmeshed in conflicts that often turned bloody and felt more dangerous than garden variety hip-hop squabbles. Though he often emerged from the losing end of these disputes, there remained a sense of unbeatability about him. Through it all, he stood tall at five feet and six inches, resolute in himself, if nothing else.

Battle-scarred and wizened, Prodigy lived long enough to see himself become a grand antihero of sorts. Following his deal with 50 Cents G Unit and a three-year prison bid, he came back to rap in 2011 more as a solo act than group member. He embraced his veteran status, co-authoring an autobiography and a prison-centered cookbook, and focused on his physical health in the way the Black men need to as they approach their 40seating better, working out, moving away from alcohol. He became a working rapper, leaning on his legacy without resting on his laurels or reliving his glory dayshe pushed forward and kept himself current by acknowledging ascendant talents, releasing songs with Troy Ave and Buffalos Conway. Right up to his death, he was workingcreating new music and touring.

At the same time, he could be a bit of a drunk uncle. He released a classic blog rant demanding homage (to be fair, shook would not be a colloquialism without Mobb Deep) and delved deeper into his arcane fascinations (his latest album, released this past January was titled Hegelian Dialectic (The Book of Revelation) as part of trilogy that was set to include The Book of Heroine and The Book of the Dead). His belief that the Illuminatia secret society that wanted his mind, soul, and his bodywas actually a thing became more pronounced.

In 2011, he appeared on Alex Joness Infowars, claiming that President Barack Obama was part of a bloodline that made him cousins with the Bushes and Dick Cheney. Whether he knows it or not, hes down with this whole conspiracy to rule the world, Prodigy asserted of Obama. Basically, hes a part of itto brainwash people and to kill people, genocide. Everything thats going on out there that is just so fantastic [that] you really dont want to believe it, Obama is down with it.

To his credit, he knew how he sounded: This [is] what I was promoting to people and they tried to, like, almost demonize me or say, Oh, Prodigys crazy. Whats wrong with this guy? Hes just ranting and he doesnt know what hes talking about. Hes a conspiracy theorist and he does this and he does that. Im like, Wow. Theres that many crazy people in this world, for real.

Spaghetti-head Mobb n-ggas is full-bred Fully-blown melanin tone I rock skeleton bone shirts and verses But thirst for worse beats So I can put more product out on the street Get respect and love all across the board We've been adored for keepin' it raw Nothin' less or more I score every time for sure While the rest of y'all n-ggas just nil Quiet Storm

It may be impossible to overstate Mobb Deeps importance to hip-hop as a whole, and to New York hip-hop in particular. Theyalong with the Wu-Tang Clan and Boot Camp Clik were responsible to defining what is now undeniably referred to as an East Coast sound: chopped dusty jazz and soul samples over big drums, accompanied by gritty and grimy rhymes about urban despair. Mobb Deep created headphone musicengrossing and encompassing analog mood music thats sonically distinct from pristine, dignified earbud sounds of today. Its the banner carried by acts like Roc Marciano, Ka, Westside Gunn, and Conwayand the reason why those artists exist at all.

As conversations about these things go, its become a shortcut to a point to describe Mobb Deep as a duo where Prodigy was the rappers rapper and Havoc was the producers producer, but the truth is more intertwined than that. Prodigy constructed bars of theretofore unforeseen formation that remain some of raps most iconic verses. And its true the Havocaided by the tutelage and assistance of A Tribe Called Quests Q-Tip on The Infamousbuilt incomparably dour grooves of head-nodding moodiness. But, when I was interviewing the group shortly after the release of The Infamous, two things stood out to me that I have thought about often in the 20-plus years since.

The first was when I commented on the groups vocabulary. They seemed to not know what I was talking about as I was telling them about the way they used wordsnot just slang, but terms like butter-soft leather upholstery, their internal rhymes, their novel ending couplets. I asked them if there was something in the water in Queensbridge. Havoc doubled-over cackling and P, sunken on a couch giggled and smirked to himself as they both repeated: He said something in the water

Theres no replacement for Prodigy.

At that early stage, there was no narrative that said that P was the rapper of the group. He was undoubtedly the stronger and more gripping writer of the two, but Havoc wasnt just there for dressing. Especially on the first two Mobb Deep albums, he more than holds his own.

The other thing I think about gives lie to the idea that Havoc was the lone architect of the groups sound. As we spoke during that interview, there wasnt any indication that the musical process was anything but a joint affair. At one point, P was talking about how they had to rework some samples due to clearance issues and he played an invisible keyboard in the air. It never left me how nimble and articulate his fingers wereit was the movement of someone familiar with keys, not a haphazard plunking of digits. Its something that makes sense in the face of Prodigys lineagehis mother was a member of the 60s girls group The Crystals, his father was part of a doo-wop act, his grandfather was a jazz musician. Not only was P the driving force between many of the Mobbs narrative ideas, he was instrumental in charting the course for their sound, and his solo albums revealed his ear was as crucial and influential as Q-Tips fifth Beatle role on The Infamous.

Mobb Deeptitans of rap with a decades-long career that few could have predictedwas a coming of two halves to create a whole. Its doubtful that either member would have reached the rarified heights that they had without the other, or had the confidence to place their big pre-release single as the next-to-last cut on their debut album. And its without question that Mobb Deepafter all of the internal and external dramais over. Theres no replacement for Prodigy.

For most acts that debuted in 1995, this would be a career retrospective with no thought of future endeavors. But Mobb Deep was just not any act. They may have peaked a handful of projects ago, but there was always the possibility of new greatness. Unlike rapping, production is not necessarily a young mans game and Havoc still has the potential to create transformative soundscapes. And Prodigy was in continued development as a writer; he still had interesting things to say. Its not a stretch to believe he could have further spearheaded into old-head chronicles, filled with rewarding revelations.

But, with his death, the books are closed on the Official Queensbridge Murderers. While they were here, they put their lifetimes in between the papers line and into our ears, minds, and souls. And rap was never the same.

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Why Prodigy Was A Once-In-A-Generation Rapper - Complex