Prodigy of Mobb Deep dead at 42

Made Myself A Boss

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Perspective | How Mobb Deep’s Prodigy changed rap music with 8 words



It’s just eight words — “I’m only 19, but my mind is old” — but it might be the most paralyzing rap lyric ever written, the kind of declaration that makes your pulse quicken while your blood cools in your capillaries, the kind of blunt-force poetry that activates an impossible swirl of excitement, dread, sorrow and sympathy. It arrived in 1995 on the lips of Prodigy, co-founder of the New York duo Mobb Deep, in a song called “Shook Ones (Part II),” which, amazingly, begins with dedication to those who “ain’t got no feelings.” By the end of Prodigy’s opening verse, you’ve felt everything.

Prodigy — who died on Tuesday at 42 after being hospitalized for complications related to sickle cell anemia — grew up in a rage. First, he was angry at his body, which always seemed to be losing a painful fight with the blood disorder that would ultimately end his life. Then, he was angry at a God who wouldn’t intervene, therefore must not exist. That’s how a child becomes a nihilist, how a young mind becomes old.


“I was an angry kid because of the sickle cell,” he told NPR in 2013. “So I liked the anger in hip-hop. That’s what attracted me to it; that’s what made me want to do it. It helped me get my aggression out.”

Music offered catharsis, but as a rapper, Prodigy quickly learned how to surface his personality with artful restraint. When Mobb Deep first formed in a Manhattan high school, his co-pilot, Havoc, said, Prodigy wore so much jewelry, he could hear him clanking down the hallway. But the music they eventually made together would prioritize grime over flash, and the group’s two most extraordinary albums — 1995’s “The Infamous” and 1996’s “Hell on Earth” — were instantly lauded for their shadowy grit. This was a rough-and-ready sound designed to leave bruises, stitched together from samples that crackled and hissed, noise contaminating signal. But even at its coarsest, Mobb Deep’s music always had a certain elegance to it, and it was flush with mood.

Much of that had to do with Prodigy’s evocative rhymes, which made good on his stage name, recapping teenage tales of crimes and punishments that were almost too grim to believe. “I’m lethal when I see you, there ain’t no sequel,” he warned on “The Infamous,” making you wonder how a young-old mind this callous could still arouse your sympathy.

To understand how is to try to understand how human beings survive the unfathomable cruelty of life — a cruelty formidable enough to make a child renounce his faith, but not enough to make a man forfeit his humanity. Maybe we should honor the request Prodigy made in the penultimate line of his “Shook Ones (Part II)” verse: “Take these words home and think it through.”



Chris Richards is The Washington Post's pop music critic.
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origiNel

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Not too many celebrities, music artists, sports, entertainers deaths have affected me, but my goodness this one fukking HURTS man. I remember seeing Mobb Deep live about 2 years ago during their tour celebrating 20 years of The Infamous, and then out of ALL places, seeing Prodigy at New York Comic Con just walking around like he's not a New York legend, and being able to dap him up and taking my friend's picture with him. Just shows you how real he was.

The Mobb were some of the first rappers I remember listening to as a kid, and as I got older and understood what was being said became instant favorites of mine. As a rapper there's so many things that we can highlight about what made P special, but the one thing that always bugs me out to this day is the fact that he effortlessly would make two TOTALLY DIFFERENT words rhyme bar after bar, and he would sometimes make that happen for a whole fukking verse. that shyt is PURE fukking talent. I mean come on, who else can rhyme end one bar with DAWNING the next bar with GARMENT, and the shyt sounded like it rhymed?! That's CRAZY!

What Prodigy went through with sickle cell anemia is absolutely painful, and I remember reading a while back that it's a miracle if one affected by it lives past the age of 50. P set trends and with Havoc ushered in a new era in not only New York hip-hop, but the culture in general, and his impact not only as part of Mobb Deep but as a solo artist is so paramount. Prodigy is a New York legend, and as much as it hurts that's he's gone, he (and we through his raps) will never have to feel his pain, and he's now in a better place.

Rest In Power, Crime Rhyme Houdini P :mjcry:
 
up in here

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FrankieLymon757 said:
Has Havoc issued a statement ?
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Hav is mad private, we might not get a statement from Dunn. Can't imagine what he feeling right now, that was his main man since they was teens. They whole lives been intertwined for the last 20 plus years.

And Alc too. I know him and P had a unique bond and P treated him like family.
 
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origiNel said:
Not too many celebrities, music artists, sports, entertainers deaths have affected me, but my goodness this one fukking HURTS man. I remember seeing Mobb Deep live about 2 years ago during their tour celebrating 20 years of The Infamous, and then out of ALL places, seeing Prodigy at New York Comic Con just walking around like he's not a New York legend, and being able to dap him up and taking my friend's picture with him. Just shows you how real he was.

The Mobb were some of the first rappers I remember listening to as a kid, and as I got older and understood what was being said became instant favorites of mine. As a rapper there's so many things that we can highlight about what made P special, but the one thing that always bugs me out to this day is the fact that he effortlessly would make two TOTALLY DIFFERENT words rhyme bar after bar, and he would sometimes make that happen for a whole fukking verse. that shyt is PURE fukking talent. I mean come on, who else can rhyme end one bar with DAWNING the next bar with GARMENT, and the shyt sounded like it rhymed?! That's CRAZY!

What Prodigy went through with sickle cell anemia is absolutely painful, and I remember reading a while back that it's a miracle if one affected by it lives past the age of 50. P set trends and with Havoc ushered in a new era in not only New York hip-hop, but the culture in general, and his impact not only as part of Mobb Deep but as a solo artist is so paramount. Prodigy is a New York legend, and as much as it hurts that's he's gone, he (and we through his raps) will never have to feel his pain, and he's now in a better place.

Rest In Power, Crime Rhyme Houdini P :mjcry:
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:mjcry:
 
mobbinfms

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up in here said:
Hav is mad private, we might not get a statement from Dunn. Can't imagine what he feeling right now, that was his main man since they was teens. They whole lives been intertwined for the last 20 plus years.

And Alc too. I know him and P had a unique bond and P treated him like family.
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Their lives will be forever intertwined.
What's Havoc even gonna do now? Last few years they've been touring like crazy.
 
thaKEAF

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Family Man said:
One thing I'm really happy about is that P evolved and grew and started spitting some grown man bars in the latter part of his career. Hegelian Dialect is an incredible album.
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Never even knew about it until now..gonna check the entire thing cause that No Religion track is dope.
 
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