hard for me to pick an objective best but it's my most played album to this day hands down. anyway, here's a post i made in another thread to sum things up:
https://www.thecoli.com/threads/old...eep-the-infamous-first-came-out.349876/page-2
ok first i have to start with the poetical prophets and their unsigned hype write up in the source. "baby grand puba, little rick the ruler. in my pocket is a crazy fat bag of buddha." my homeboy latief (produced the mad wunz for masta ace) knew matty c from the source and he played us their joints right in his office, a bunch of unreleased shyt that to me displayed their early raw talent. i was HYPE & went back to school and told all my guys about them before the article was even printed. turns out my homie john who (get ready for this) went by the rhyme name prodigy knew havoc from art & design, that used to be his rhyme partner. according to him havoc stole his rhyme name & gave it to this other kid from LI. why you ask? because hav had so many rhymes referencing his man prodigy & didn't wanna change them! lol so he named his new partner prodigy with the same group name & kept it pushin
fast forward the following year and they now have a deal on 4th and broadway with a new name, mobb deep. way better than poetical prophets, that shyt was hard to me.... but of course john hated it lol. so peer pressure was the first single and i thought i was kinda raw. this is '92 so you know us east coast nikkas done lost our minds and were using props in videos like treach with the machete & chainsaw, so that boy P had a huge sickle in the video like the grim reaper or something. john was clownin and calling him mad corny
so anyway they had a few other joints i was feeling like hit it from the back but i can't front the album was kinda weak. nothing like the material matty c had played in his office when they were unsigned. so i pretty much forgot about them and moved on. let's push forward a year now and havoc shows up on black moon u da man with an amazing verse. "punk mothafukkas on the mic you violated, a rhyme ain't a rhyme if it ain't crime related.." jesus it was swaggy and woulda been the best verse if buckshot shorty hadn't blacked out at the end... not a peep from mobb deep as a group though....
now it's '94 and me and my man elvis (don't ask lol) are listening to bobbito show in his room. so stretch armstrong throws on shook ones part 1 and we just look at each other like OMG what the fukk is this shyt??? next day mad people around the way were talking about it, including my cousin out in long island who called me just to ask if i'd heard it..... and we knew right then that mobb deep was finna be a serious problem. i spoke to john a week later and he thought it was some average bullshyt with weak production lmao... but you could tell he was NERVOUS!
fast forward to '95 and shook ones part 2 & survival of the fittest are on a bunch of mixtapes man. Ron G, DJ S&S, Doo Wop, etc. no they weren't getting national attention but the new york undergound was crazy for that mobb deep to drop. oh wait, same label as wu and raekwon? oh shyt.... so anyway the album drops in the spring of that year and it pretty much never left my CD player. i crowned it a classic after one listen and played it so much that i know the whole album by heart to this day, skits and all. forget about shook ones, trife life, right back at you (my fav joint), start of your ending..... man what about just step prelude where noyd and P rhyme acapella??? GOAT status
anyway reactions were a mixed bag. my homie ron didn't care for the album because he thought there was too much tough talk & rhymes about crack and guns. some of my other guys felt the same way too. if you were into pharcyde, kool keith, souls of mischief, cella dwellas, pete rock & cl smooth etc you probably weren't feeling this album at all. it really divided hip hop heads, it's only years later we look back on it and say how it was real hip hop and romanticize the infamous. that infamous prelude with P telling nikkas don't gamble with their lives or waste money on their hospital bills really turned a lot of people off. by the end of '95 though they were one of the most popular groups and by '96 hit instant legend status
oh and as for john? he couldn't front anymore, stopped this personal vendetta against havoc and admitted that it was an incredible piece of work. he later stopped rhyming all together and became the DJ for MOP but he got fired for some reason lol. anyway that's my long ass mobb deep/infamous story, i love it the same to this day yall sorry for that long ass post
so basically old boy = the infamous stanley
I've been a fan since Hell on Earth. I wasn't old enough to catch The Infamous when it dropped. But ever since Hell on Earth I've been a Mobb Deep fan
son on everything gang i thought you were my age wtf
you mean to tell me you weren't there for low end theory, enta da stage, 36 chambers, illmatic, dah shinin, whut thee album, mecca and the soul brother, breaking atoms, buhloone mindstate, let alone all that 80's crack?
wow. you are one knowledgeable ass 80's baby my G. i would never know
