Image via Complex Original
Tonight, The Infamous Mobb Deep will be taking the stage together for the first time in three years at New York City's Best Buy Theater (buy tickets here). Complex will definitely be in the building because who wouldn't love to see Prodigy and Havoc take the stage to perform all of their classic songs? In honor of the show (and in addition to our epic The Making of Mobb Deep's The Infamous and all the other features we've done with Prodigy lately) we got on the horn with P to discuss the making of his classic songs from all the Mobb albums, his solo work, and his guest appearances.
Hear P explain how he and Hav are trendsetters, how he got $200,000 for an album he was gonna give away for free, and how Big Pun once pulled out over a dozen guns on him. Better yet, see P talk about how Jay-Z was scared of Death Row, how (contrary to popular belief) his verse on "Thun & Kicko" isn't actually about Nas, and how Game tried to recruit Mobb Deep to Black Wall Street when they were about to sign to G-Unit.
As told to Insanul Ahmed (@Incilin)
Mobb Deep “Hit It From The Back” (1993)
Produced by: Mobb Deep
Prodigy: “We made that beat in the basement of my crib in Hempstead and that shit was bugged out. I remember making that shit, but I don’t exactly remember where we recorded the lyrics at. We shot that in Laurelton, Queens and we had a line down the block of girls that came through for that video. We submitted it to be played unedited, but they wouldn’t play it. They said it was too dirty, and had too much sex. Only the Playboy channel would play that video.’
“It’s crazy when you look at the video now because that shit is nothing compared to videos nowadays with the sex in it. That was just the mentality back then. At the time, we were just having fun. There wasn’t nothing else to it. Just fun and being open because we had a record deal. Thinking that we’re celebrities. We thought we were superstars when we made that.”
Mobb Deep “Shook Ones Pt. II” (1995)
Produced by: Mobb Deep
Prodigy: “I remember that clearly. We wrote that in the crib high on drugs. [Laughs.] Probably weed, probably was some dust in there, mad 40s, getting twisted. That was one of the first ones where we were like, ‘Whoa. This shit is ill. This shit sounds crazy right here. This is some other shit right here son. This ain’t normal.’ So we knew we was making some shit with that song. We were in the crib and we were spitting it to each other like, ‘Yo, this shit is some other shit right here son.’
“It was just a remix of the first [‘Shook Ones’]. The first song we had made was cool. Then we made this new beat and I think the chorus was similar. We probably didn’t even intend for it to be a remix, but the chorus was probably similar. It was probably like Matty C and them niggas that was like, ‘Y’all should call this ‘Shook Ones Pt. II.’ So that’s why we did that shit.
“We had a lot of songs. When we first signed to Loud we had a 20-song demo. So all of those songs we wanted to put on the album. But we started making new ones, and through process of elimination, we wanted all the new ones. We didn’t like the old ones no more. [Laughs.]
“We made that beat at my crib in Long Island. Hav found the sample. Hav was down there fucking with the records, he was like, ‘Listen to this.’ I was like, ‘That shit sounds ill right there.’ He did that and then we were fucking with the bass and the drums together. I seen that whole shit where they found the Herbie Hancock shit. That’s crazy. I didn’t know it was a mystery or that it was that serious to people. They were really trying to figure out where that came from.”
Mobb Deep “Survival of The Fittest” (1995)
Produced by: Mobb Deep
Prodigy: “We made that in Hav’s crib, in Queensbridge. We’d make the beats in Hav’s crib [but lay vocals in the studio]. Or sometimes, we’d make the beat in the crib, write half of the song in the crib, then go to the studio and finish it. That was one of the ones where Hav ain’t really like the beat. He was about to erase that shit. There’s a lot of joints like that, where he was about to trash them and we had to change his mind. I was out somewhere on the block chilling probably, I came in the crib, and Hav had the beat playing.
“I was like, ‘Damn. What the fuck is this?’ He’s like, ‘It’s some bullshit, I’m about to fucking scratch this shit and do another one.’ I was like, ‘Nah, don’t scratch that nigga, hold up. Let niggas hear this.’ And I called niggas over like, ‘Yo, listen to this fucking beat this nigga just made.’ And everybody was like, ‘Yo, that shit is crazy.’ Then we both just started writing rhymes to it and it came out good. We knocked that out all in one day. So, I had to save that one.
“Hav’s pops was a DJ, so Hav had a lot of records from the ‘70s and the ‘80s. We both had a good record collection. Hav was already listening to records before I met him. He was trying to sample on a cassette player, hit record, pause, record, and pause, and making the beats like that. When he met me, we bought the equipment. That’s when he started to really get into making beats. I actually showed him how to sample, how to do this, and how to sequence the shit. Once he got the hang of it he just went in and started going crazy."
Mobb Deep “Temperature's Rising” (1995)
Produced by: Q-Tip
Co-produced by: Mobb Deep
Prodigy: “‘Temperature’s Rising’ is a song that happened when Hav’s brother [Killa Black] had went through a little murder situation and he was on the run from the police. The Ds caught him and when we found out about it, we were on our way to the studio, so we decided to make the song about what was really happening in our lives. Everything we say about that shit is real. That’s what really happened. It was like, ‘Damn, they caught Black.’ We went to the studio that night, we were all emotional about it because that’s Hav’s brother. That’s a serious charge, so we just made a song dedicated to Killa about how his situation went down, how he was on the run, and how he got caught. If you listen to it, it’s not directly saying exactly what happened, it’s just saying some shit went down.”
RELATED: CLICK HERE TO READ THE MAKING OF MOBB DEEP'S THE INFAMOUS
LL Cool J f/ Prodigy, Fat Joe, Foxy Brown, & Keith Murray “I Shot Ya” (1995)
Produced by: Trackmasters
Prodigy: “LL put a lot of the new, hot rappers on that song at that time. Shit was a banger man. LL was one of the reasons I started rapping. It was only right that I’d get on that and make that shit hot. When we recorded that shit everybody did their shit separately. They just put the whole shit together, but that shit was ill. They used to play that shit in the club back in the day, in The Tunnel and all that. That was like, The Tunnel record. And The Tunnel was like our clubhouse. Every weekend we’d be in there like a family gathering. You could find us every Sunday in that motherfucker. That was our little hangout to promote Mobb Deep and let the people see us having fun.”
Capone-N-Noreaga f/ Mobb Deep & Tragedy Khadafi "L.A., L.A. (Kuwait Mix)” (1996)
Produced by: Marley Marl
Prodigy: “We were down south in North Carolina, a bunch of us were down there getting our licenses. We were watching TV one morning and seen that Snoop video for ‘New York, New York.’ They were kicking over our buildings and stomping through our city. That was some disrespectful shit. If we did that to them they would have felt the same way. Anybody would have felt the same way. If Mobb Deep stomped through somebody’s city and kicked their buildings over, they’re going to feel disrespected about that. So that’s how we took it.
“Automatically I was like, ‘I’m going to make a song calling right back out to them. We’re going to hold down New York. This shit ain’t right, right here.’ We went in the studio with Tragedy and Stretch Armstrong. Tradg had that new group called CNN at the time, so he threw them on there with us, and we made that song.
“We were performing that song out there [in California] because that song was number one in L.A. We were getting requests to come perform and we were going out there performing it when the song was hot.
“That’s why we took offense when Jay-Z came out years later. After everything died down—and people lost their lives—he came out with that song ‘Money, Cash, Hoes,’ where he had that line ‘It’s like New York’s been soft ever since Snoop came through and crushed the buildings.’ We took offense to that like, ‘How you talking now? We was out there risking our lives.’
“This shit was on and popping and we were still out there doing shows. This dude wasn’t around, he had nothing to say at that time. That was kind of crazy that you just come out of nowhere talking about some shit that you weren’t nowhere around for, talking about you’re bringing back the feeling. We took offense, so we said something about it. That’s how that whole shit sparked with him.
“He should have just shut the fuck up and minded his business. We went after him after that. Like, I fucking hit you in the head. [Laughs.] I took it upon myself like, ‘You know what? This fucking bitch ass nigga popping shit about some shit that he wasn’t even around and his name was involved.’ Tupac was going at him. His name was all in that and he didn’t have nothing to say at that time.
“Jay-Z was scared of them Death Row niggas, that’s why he ain’t say nothing. If you’re going to wait until after the nigga’s dead to start popping shit, that’s kind of corny.”
Nas f/ Mobb Deep “Live Nigga Rap” (1996)
Produced by: Havoc
Prodigy: “We recorded that for Hell On Earth. Nas called us when he was working on his album like, ‘Yo, I want to buy that song from y’all that we did.’ I was real reluctant at first because that shit was crazy hot and that was our Nas feature for our album. He was like, ‘I want to buy that shit.’ After thinking about it for a while, we sold it to him. We figured his shit would be bigger than our shit and it’d be good promotion for us because it’s Nas.
“The rhyme that I had on there is actually the rhyme that I [originally] had on ‘L.A., L.A.’ I had took that verse off of ‘L.A., L.A.’ because it was just too hot. When we did the song ‘L.A., L.A.’ we all was rhyming on it, we all had verses, but when I had wrote that verse, I was like, ‘Nah, I can’t put this on here. This is too crazy right here.’ So I ended up just doing the chorus on that song, and Hav did his verse on there, and that was it. I took that rhyme and I put it on ‘Live Nigga Rap’ like two days later.
“If you listen to the rhyme on ‘Live Nigga Rap,’ I’m talking about California shit. I said, ‘Got links with big cats down in Santa Barbre.’ Nore tried to jack my little style off of that too. That whole ‘Live Nigga Rap’ verse, Nore tried to jack my shit a little something [Laughs.]. If you listen to it, you’ll know what I’m talking about. But it ain’t nothing, that’s cool.”
Mobb Deep “Drop a Gem on ‘Em” (1996)
Produced by: Mobb Deep
Prodigy: “We recorded that song at Access Studios. We just went in and made that song after we heard Tupac saying some things about us because of our ‘L.A., L.A.’ song. We heard somebody playing ‘Hit Em Up’ on the block and we were like, ‘Oh word? Niggas wanna make songs about us? Aight, cool.’ As soon as we heard Tupac saying anything about Mobb Deep, we went in and made that shit about him. We were like, ‘Fuck this nigga, we going right at this nigga and whoever the fuck he’s down with.’
“‘Drop a Gem on ‘Em’ was unique and it was different. Pac just took a beat that everybody knew of already and just tried to flip the lyrics or whatever. That’s why I think with ‘Drop a Gem On Em’ people were like, ‘Yo, that shit is fire. Y’all killed the nigga,’ because it was like a new beat. Nobody had ever heard a beat like that before. The lyrics were crazy.
“We had actually pulled the song because it was the first single off of Hell On Earth. We submitted it to radio and radio put it in rotation, even in Cali. But when Pac died, we pulled the song off radio and told them to stop playing it out of respect for his family and out of respect for the dead. We were like, ‘Nah, stop pushing that.’ We still put it on the album.
“We were about to shoot a video for that. We were about to go in on that nigga, but we were like, ‘Yo, pull it.’ We were just going to go in on this nigga in the video. I mean, it was so new when Pac died that I think it was only on the radio for about a week or two. So, we didn’t really have plans for the video, but we were about to shoot a video for it. When Pac died, we switched the single to 'Hell On Earth' instead.”
Mobb Deep “Front Lines (Hell On Earth)” (1996)
Produced by: Mobb Deep
Prodigy: “We had a lot of people who died during the making of that album, we had at least five of our friends and family members die. It took us two years to make that album because of all the death that was happening around us. The shit was really devastating to our lives and we kept pushing on. We continued to make the album and we continued to record songs, but our minds were fucked up. We were in our zone from all those losses that we took those past two years. That’s what ‘Hell On Earth’ was about, we felt that we were living in hell.
“If you listen to that album, it’s crazy dark. You could tell that we were angry and upset making that album. When we made ‘Hell On Earth’ that was just one of those songs, but that was a single. Since we pulled ‘Drop a Gem on ‘Em,’ we put ‘Hell On Earth’ out. If you listen to that song you’ll be like, ‘This ain’t no single. Why would you use this for a single?’ It sounds like some dark, hardcore, grimy shit.
“You could tell that we didn’t give a fuck at the time. We were doing whatever the fuck we wanted. We were going against the grain. We didn’t give a fuck if it was a party record or radio record. We said, ‘This is what we want for the single and this is what it’s gonna be.’ A lot of people respected that shit when it came out because nobody was putting out songs like that.
“We lost Havoc’s brother Killer Black, my man Twin’s brother, we lost one of our man’s Yammy from the projects, I lost my father, and there were other people that were around us. The people that we lost were the strongest people around us. You’re talking about people that would kill somebody for Mobb Deep, on some real shit.
“When something goes down and we in the club, these are going to be the niggas that are going to pop off, no questions asked, no hesitation, none of that shit. It doesn’t matter who it is. These niggas that died were the reason niggas were scared of Mobb Deep. Anybody from Queensbridge knew about Yammy, Killer Black, and Scarface Twin. When we lost these niggas we lost a lot of power and strength because it’s hard to find niggas like that.”
Mobb Deep “G.O.D. Pt. III” (1996)
Produced by: Mobb Deep
Prodigy: “We were on the block one night in front of Havoc’s building on 12th street and were all just drinking Lime Bacardi when it first came out. Bacardi Limon, that’s what they called it. We bought it from the liquor store and we were drinking that shit on the block like, ‘Yo, this shit is gooder than a motherfucker, we got to make a song about this shit.’ [Laughs.] So we were just freestyling on the block drunk and I came up with that chorus and niggas was like, ‘That shit sounds ill. You should use that for a song.’ So that’s how that song came about, just drunk on the block, wilding out, having fun.
“My man G.O.D Godfather from the Infamous Mobb, he was with me on the block when I was making that shit up so I threw his name in there. We call him Godfather Part III because in the projects we used to call him Trip as in Triple L. We called him Triple L because when we used to play dice, he used to always get trips. I gave him the nickname Godfather. Then we gave him the Part III because of the trips. So, we used to call him Godfather Part III. So I’m sitting there on the block freestyling and was rapping to him like, ‘G.O.D., father Part III/QBC, sip Lime Bacardi.’ That’s why we put him at the end of that video right before the beat switched to ‘Extortion.’
“We always had the idea to take something from Scarface. All the Scarface beats that you hear Mobb Deep sample, that was my idea. I was sitting in the crib one day watching the movie. I turned around to do something, not watching the screen, and I heard the music in the background and I was like, ‘Yo, we should sample that shit. I can’t believe I never thought of this idea before and I can’t believe nobody else thought of this idea before.’ I said, ‘Yo, we gotta hurry up and do this now.’ I jetted to the studio in Manhattan like, ‘Yo, sample this, hurry up.’ Havoc came and flipped the beat for me and then that was it. When everybody heard it they were like, ‘Why didn’t I think of that first?’
Big Pun f/ Prodigy & Inspectah Deck “Tres Leches (Triboro Trilogy)” (1998)
Produced by: RZA
Prodigy: “I was locked up with my Spanish homies and they were all talking about Pun. So I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got a song with Pun called ‘Tres Leches.’’ And my niggas just started falling out laughing, talking about, ‘That shit is called ‘Three Milks?’ Why you got a song called ‘Three Milks?’’ I didn’t even know that shit was called ‘Three Milks!’ I started thinking about it like, ‘Why the fuck is that shit called three milks?’ That shit was kind of bugged the fuck out. I wish Pun was alive, so I could ask the nigga. I just thought the shit sounded cool. I thought that shit meant ‘Three Boroughs’ or something.
“Pun was like a prankster, a jokester. He was a funny motherfucker. We had gotten real close after making that song. We used to hang out at his crib, go to clubs together, just to hang out and get bent. Pun really loved Mobb Deep. We were like one of his favorite groups of all time.
“One night we were up in his crib in the Bronx, it was me and a couple of my boys. Pun was showing me his gun. He had a P57 and there was like 15 other people in his crib, all Terror Squad niggas. Pun would be like. ‘Yo, show P your gun,’ and one of them would pull out. Then another one would pull out like, ‘Yo, P look at this one. Look at this one P.’
“At the end there was like 16, 17 guns out around me. Everybody was showing me what kind of hammer they had. So when everybody had their gun out, Pun looked at me like, ‘Let us see your gun P.’ I was like ‘Yo, I left my shit in the car nigga.’ Pun was just like ‘Yeah, see. We got the drop on you right now. We could just flip on you right now.’ He was like, ‘Don’t ever do that shit. Keep your gun on you nigga.’ I was like ‘No doubt son.’ [Laughs.]
“That shit just felt kind of crazy. All them guns out and I ain’t have my shit on me. I left my shit in the car because it felt disrespectful to bring my gun in somebody’s house. Ever since then, I always remembered that shit. I always keep my hammer on me and shit. Pun might have been the reasons I caught my gun case. [Laughs]”
Mobb Deep f/ Nas “It’s Mine” (1999)
Produced by: Havoc
Prodigy: “Right after we did the ‘G.O.D. Pt. III’ beat with the Scarface sample, there was another part of Scarface that we sampled for ‘It’s Mine.’ I’m sitting in the crib watching the movie again and I hear that part in the beginning where the boats are coming in from Cuba to Florida and I’m like, ‘Holy shit! Why nobody ever took this part right here? These niggas is stupid out here.’
”I ran to the studio again and said, ‘Hurry up son.’ [Havoc] sampled it and niggas was like, ‘Oh my God, these niggas did it again. They took something else out of Scarface that niggas could’ve used.’ We sampled Scarface a third time too when we did ‘When You Hear That,’ which Alchemist produced. We took three joints from Scarface that nobody was thinking about using.
“We had made the beat first and I was like, ‘Yo man, Nas gotta get on this shit because the shit is too ill. This is one for Nas.’ We called him up and the nigga said, ‘Hell yeah.’ Nigga heard the beat and went crazy. He was like, ‘Yo, this shit is ill right here.’ He just killed that talking about Barbara Streisand and Halle Berry and all this other shit on the song. The nigga went in on that shit. [Laughs.]
“He did that hook because we didn’t have a chorus for it. We just wrote our verses and then Nas came in and was like, ‘Yo, I’ve got an idea for the chorus.’ That Brandy and Monica song just came out, it was the brand new hot shit, and Nas was like, ‘Yo, we taking that chorus and we gonna flip it.’”
Mobb Deep “Quiet Storm” (1999)
Produced by: Havoc
Prodigy: “Hav was in the studio all day and I came late at night and these niggas was making a beat. Hav had the old Melly Mel song ‘White Lines’ sampled. After he laid the drum pattern, he added the piano—the piano is what puts that whole beat together—and then him and Noyd were like, ‘Yo, we going to pick up shorties.’ I was like, ‘Y’all niggas leaving? Let’s do this song, this shit is fire right here.’ They like, ‘Nah, we’ll be right back.’
“They bounced and I’m in the studio dolo. I’m like, ‘Fuck it. I’m going in on this beat right now.’ I sat there and wrote the whole song in like an hour and I recorded it. I was like, ‘I’m not leaving any room for anyone else to get on this shit, this is too ill.’ I was already working on my solo album so I was like, ‘Gimme this shit. I’m taking this beat. This is for my album nigga.’ [Laughs.] That was my whole mentality.
“I was coming clean like, ‘I spent too many nights, sniffing coke, getting right/Wasting my life, now I’m trying to make things right,’ because that’s how I was living. I felt like I had cleaned my life at that time. I wasn’t using anything, no drugs, no alcohol. I was living correctly and trying to make things right.
“I recorded that shit and these niggas never came back to the studio. I bounced and played it for niggas the next day and they were like, ‘That’s cool.’ They didn’t understand or see the power of that record. I called DJ Clue and was like, ‘Son, I got this song that I want you to put on a mixtape.’ Clue put it on every single mixtape that he put out that year. Usually a DJ will put it on one mixtape, but he kept putting it on all his mixtapes.
“Then, we were in the Tunnel—because that was our club, every Sunday we were there—and Clue is DJing. All of a sudden he threw on ‘Quiet Storm’—it was called ‘White Lines’ at the time because I didn’t even have a title for it. This shit ain’t mixed, it ain’t mastered, it sounds like shit, but he played it in the club and people were actually dancing to it. I guess they knew it from the mixtapes.
“I’m bugging off of this shit because I ain’t never seen some shit like that before. You don’t play a song in the club unless it’s a single, it’s getting radio play, unless people know that shit. This nigga played the song from a mixtape in the Tunnel nigga. The Tunnel holds like four thousand people. That’s not somewhere where you fuck around and play a song that niggas are probably not going to like.
“I’m looking at people’s reaction to it and they dancing and having a good time. We go back to the Tunnel, he plays it again. He starts playing it every Sunday or whoever is filling in, they’re playing it too. And from there the song just took off. After he started playing it in the Tunnel they started playing it on the radio and this is the unmixed version. This is for a year straight before we actually dropped it as a single.”
Mobb Deep f/ Lil Kim “Quiet Storm (Remix)” (1999)
Produced by: Havoc
Prodigy: “After a year Havoc was like, ‘Yo son we need a single for Murda Muzik.’ We had been working on Murda Muzik at the same time I was working on my solo album. Hav was like, ‘We got some good songs, but we need that song.’ I said, ‘That’s for my solo album, nigga you ain’t getting that song. Let me get my little shine on nigga. Murda Muzik already got hot shit.’ He goes, ‘Nah nigga. That song is too fire nigga. You gotta give that to Mobb Deep.’
“I said, ‘Aight.’ But I was reluctant. That was my single for H.N.I.C. and I didn’t want to give it up. Finally, Chris Lighty convinced me. He was like, ‘We got radio rotation in different states now and it’s not even a single yet. It’s not even mixed yet. That shit is getting played in the club so you gotta give that song up.’ So, I ended up giving that record up to Mobb Deep and we put Hav and Little Kim on it and that’s how we did that.
“The song was so hot in the club and when you think of the club you think of girls, partying, sex, drugs, and alcohol. So we were like, ‘Yo, we need a female element on this.’ So we got in touch with Kim who wasn’t really hot at that time. So when we put her on there, that brought Kim back to life. That shit really gave her life again because she was kind of down at the time after Biggie—God bless the dead—died.
Prodigy “Keep It Thoro” (2000)
Produced by: The Alchemist
Prodigy: “I made that when I was living in Bushwick, Brooklyn at the time. Alchemist had given me a tape full of beats and that was one of my favorite beats on the tape. I just sat in the crib and wrote that song in a couple hours. As soon as I wrote it, I was like ‘Wow. This one is crazy.’ I had to call a couple of my mans to say it to them over the phone and everyone was like, ‘Record that. Go to the studio right now, and record that.’
“The reason I did [H.N.I.C.] was for another check. Mobb Deep was dropping albums every two years, so I figured why not get a check in between that? The difference is, it’s all P. It’s P’s ideas, P picks the beat, so it’s all my influence. It’s all my choices on there. With Mobb Deep, we have to agree on things. We have to agree that we want to use that beat or agree on the type of song we want to do. That’s the only difference really.”
Mobb Deep f/ Vita & Big Noyd “The Learning (Burn)” (2001)
Produced by: Havoc
Prodigy: “We were in Freeport at our crib. We were all living together at that time and Hav was making this beat in the basement of our studio, early in the morning. It had to be like seven in the morning, Hav always gets up early. I’m in my room sleeping and I hear this bassline thumping, it woke me up. I went downstairs and Hav had this ill beat playing. It sounded like something the Beach Boys would be playing, I don’t know why.
“We wrote the rhymes right there in the crib and recorded it and then we took it to the big studio to record over. At that time, we were on our female run. We were like, ‘Let’s add a female voice on the chorus. When it’s playing in the clubs, girls will be more into it if they hear a female in the club. But we already did Lil Kim. What female are we going to add without trying to do same thing we did before?’
“We called Vita because she had that song ‘Where Would I Be Without You’ with Ja Rule that was hot at that time. She came and did it and that shit was hot.
“Noyd killed it. We try to put Noyd on only fast party records because Noyd’s style is live performance. If you see Noyd live his energy alone is going to make you enjoy the show. So we always try put him on a song that fits his character.”
Mobb Deep f/ 112 “Hey Luv (Anything)” (2001)
Produced by: Havoc
Prodigy: “We made that in the house in the basement. Havoc made the beat and had a guitar riff going in the beat and I was like, ‘Yo, this shit reminds me of ‘Quiet Storm’ because of the kick and the bass.’ What really makes that song so popular in the club is that it has that house beat to it. And Hav was like, ‘Yeah, it’s alright.’ He didn’t really like it. I was like, ‘Just let me rhyme to the shit and then decide if it’s hot or not.’ I wrote my rhyme to it, recorded it, and played it for him and he was like, ‘Okay, now I like it. This shit is better than I thought.’
“Then I said, ‘We gotta get an R&B chorus on this shit.’ He said, ‘Who you think?’ I said 112 because that was my baby mom’s favorite R&B group at that time. And they were hot then and we needed to do something that nobody would expect. But no one was using them at the time so we was like, ‘Yo, let’s get 112 because that’ll be something different.’
“When we put that song out a lot of people were saying, ‘Oh that’s not Mobb Deep.’ But we got more radio play off that song than any other song in Mobb Deep history. Every radio station across the country was banging that. And it still had that edge to it. If you listen to my rhymes, I’m talking about stabbing a nigga’s girl and taking a girl from a nigga.
“We would do shows and the girls doubled with ‘Quiet Storm,’ but now it’s triple the amount of girls after we put out ‘Hey Luv.’ And the dudes were still there because we were still performing our classics. But the girls knew that we would be performing that song so they would all come out and they would be lined up at the front of the stage. ‘Quiet Storm,’ ‘Burn,’ and that song stepped our female audience up tremendously.”
Mobb Deep “Get Away” (2001)
Produced by: Ez Elpee
Prodigy: “That was a song we made in the crib and basically we were just riding along to the beat. The beat said ‘Getaway’ so we were forming our verses around that. That was an easy song to write because all we had to do was say things and then the next line was ‘Getaway.’ After we did that, a lot of people kind of bit that style that Hav created. Anybody that you hear with a sample where they’re talking back to the sample, they got that from ‘Getaway.’
“Look at the rhyme style Hav used on the song ‘Pray For Me’ with Lil Mo on the Infamy album. That’s the first time that anyone has ever rhymed like that in the history of rap music. You’ll never find nothing before that and people started biting that style afterwards. Hav is trend setter with a lot of styles. Like, singing choruses. Hav started that back in ‘97, ‘98. Adding static to make a beat sound like dirty, dusty records are playing, Hav started that. He’s definitely a trend setter. I could run down the line of things that Hav started. And he don’t even talk about that kind of shit. He doesn’t even care.”
Cormega f/ Prodigy "Thun & Kicko" (2001)
Produced by: Havoc
Prodigy: “We were in Soundtrack Studios working on Murda Muzik. Mega had wanted to buy a Hav beat for his album. So Hav started playing the beat like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to give this to son.’ I recorded my verse and then Mega did his shit later. That shit was written way before Mega’s verse was written, in a different studio and all that. I don’t even know where Mega laid his verse down.
“In his verse, Mega is taking shots at Nas. When Nas listened to it, it may have seemed like anything I’m saying is talking about him too. But I didn’t know Mega was going to do that. He did that on his own. Nas took a offense to that and got mad at me. Through the grapevine I heard that was the reason why [Nas] made ‘Build & Destroy’ about me. I just started getting word that he admitted that it was because of that song. Nas was coming out of nowhere with that ‘Build & Destroy’ shit. That shit was the most shocking shit to me. I was like, ‘Why is Nas going at me? For what? What the fuck did I do to this nigga?’
“I was like, ‘This is crazy yo. He’s going at me for some shit I ain’t even do.’ For some reason, he thought that I was either co-signing Mega’s verse about him or the whole song was about him. That was far from the truth. I have no reason to be jealous of, mad at, or have any bad feelings towards Nas. I used to look up to Nas as a rap mentor. He used to give me inspiration, so I would never come at him sideways. That would make no sense. He embraced me in their hood and there was nothing but love and respect.
“I guess it just got interpreted the wrong way when he heard the song. It’s too bad that Nas felt like that because he was wrong. He kind of jumped the gun a little bit on that by going at me because I had nothing to do with that shit. But I never even told him that my verse was made before Cormega’s. He’s probably gonna find out for the first time when he reads this shit.” [Laughs.]
Mobb Deep “Got It Twisted” (2004)
Produced by: The Alchemist
Prodigy: “We were in Alchemist’s crib in Manhattan and he made that beat and it was just kind of strange, because it was like an ‘80s pop record. It samples [Thomas Dolby’s] ‘She Blinded Me With Science.’ It was just some different shit, so when we heard it we were just like, ‘That’s kind of fly how you flipped that shit.’ The baseline was sounding crazy. Then he added the sexy woman’s voice on it, which made it even iller. We just flipped it from there. At that time we had just made our new deal, we were feeling good about the new situation and ready to put out this new album. It was just business as usual for us. We were just having fun doing what we do. We don’t put too much thought into it, we just go.”
50 Cent f/ Mobb Deep “Outta Control (Remix)” (2005)
Produced by: Dr. Dre
Prodigy: “That was like one of the first songs that we did when 50 had wanted to do the deal with us. We had recorded like 40 songs before we signed the contract, just shooting each other songs through the email. 50 told me, ‘I’ve got a Dr. Dre joint for y’all.’ I told Hav, ‘Yo Dre produced this one nigga. It’s on now, we got a Dre beat.’ We hopped on that shit and sent it right back to him. Anytime he sent us a song, we’d send it right back. That’s how we did so many songs before we signed the contract.
“We actually shot the video and everything before we signed the G-Unit deal. We were making a lot of moves with Fif. We were doing songs for a movie soundtrack, he had bought us bonus Porsches, and there was a lot of shit happening. It was just a good deal for us because he was showing us how much he appreciated Mobb Deep. You could just tell that he had an attachment to our music. It wasn’t no business deal for him, it was a real attachment with Mobb Deep’s music.
“Fif had the ‘Game Over’ shirts made for the video. Before we had started doing business with 50, me and Game were kind of cool. We didn’t really know each other, but we had done a couple of songs. Right before we had got the phone call from 50 that he wanted to do a deal with us, Game had found out that we were free agents and offered us a deal at Black Wall Street.
“Game had called my phone and was like, ‘Yo I’ve heard y’all for years and want to offer y’all a deal.’ Automatically we were like, ‘Game’s a new artist or whatever. He just went through his bullshit with 50. He had stood up to 50, got his own shit going on.’ But we really didn’t entertain the thought really of signing with Black Wall Street. It was something that we wouldn’t have done.
“So he sent me a message and I was like, ‘Let me just fuck with this nigga, because we ain’t going to fucking sign anyway. Let me just say some wild crazy shit.’ I told him, ‘Mobb Deep wants a $3 Million advance to sign.’ [Laughs.] He hit me back and was like, ‘I’m going to get it for you. We’re going to have a conversation with Geffen and we’re going to make it happen.’ I was just like, ‘Yeah, whatever.’
“When we had started doing business with 50—and rumors started getting out there that we was about to sign with G-Unit—Game had hit me and was like, ‘Say it ain’t so.’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ He was like, ‘You about to do a deal with G-Unit?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, we’ve been talking to them.’ And the nigga stopped hitting me back after that so it was like whatever.
“But 50 had made them shirts and we were just like, ‘Whatever, cool. This is our new team. We fucking with them.’ So basically it was like whoever had beef with 50 got beef with us. That was our new team so that’s what it was. We didn’t mind having those shirts on, we didn’t care.”
Mobb Deep f/ 50 Cent “Pearly Gates” (2006)
Produced by: Exile
Prodigy: “That song came about from 50 Cent. [He sent it to us] and it was just the chorus, beat, and his verse. I heard where he was like, ‘If I go to hell, and you make it to heaven/Just get me to the gate and I’ll talk my way in.’ It was being real cocky, laughing at the organized religion, and seeing how false a lot of that shit is.
“I wrote my verse based on the fact that we were brought over here as slaves from Africa. Over in our motherland, we had our own connection with the creator. There was no such thing as Bibles. The Bible is something Europeans created. When we were brought over here, they shoved that down our throats and they said, ‘This is your God and this is what you believe in.’ My verse is shitting on that God and shitting on that story. A lot of people didn’t understand that. They just thought, ‘Yo, what the fuck is P talking about?’ How I took it, it’s like, ‘That’s not my God. My God is something different.’
“I can say, ‘Fuck all that,’ because that’s not what I believe in. I’ve got my own spiritual connection, just like we did before we were brought over here as slaves. A lot of our ancestors were murdered and raped as slaves. So basically, that’s what that song was about. I was letting out my rage against that.”
Prodigy “Mac 10 Handle” (2007)
Produced by: The Alchemist
Prodigy: “I was working on H.N.I.C. 2 and I decided to put a mixtape out to promote my album because I ain’t had an album out in a long time. I was like, ‘I can’t just drop an album or drop a single. I’ve got to start building up, let [the new fans] know I’m a solo artist.’ I wanted it to be called Return of The Mac because it’s a play on words. I’m not talking about mack like a pimp, I was talking about the gun. Like somebody’s coming back for revenge.
“The first the song that I did was ‘Mac 10 Handle’ and that was about a dude that’s plotting on his enemies and his haters, but they don’t even know. They’re running around thinking shit is sweet, but this nigga is in the crib, straight plotting. The whole concept of that CD was a lot of blaxploitation film music, that ‘70s sound like Hell Up In Harlem, Black Caesar. We just wanted to give it that feel because it matched the title. Alchemist ran with that. He recorded the beat, I recorded ‘Mac 10 Handle’ in his crib, and then I was like, ‘We’ve got to shoot a video for this.’
“Before we even put the song out—we shot a video for it and put it on YouTube. That shit had like 400,000 views in two days. That was the first time somebody put a video out before the song came out and shot a professional video for a mix CD. After that, you seen mad people started doing it. I created the concept, Dan The Man shot the video for me, and he just ran with it. I told him I wanted to make it like some psychotic, Rob Zombie shit. I knew that would create the buzz needed on the Internet. I see all these other companies, rap labels, and rappers going in one direction, so I decided to go in the opposite direction.
“The plan was to give it to DJ Whoo Kid for free, just as a regular G-Unit mix CD. G-Unit Radio Part 27, or Part 85, or whatever the fuck it was. But then the hype from the video was so tremendous, I started getting phone calls from labels who were offering money. They were like, ‘Yo, what is this that you’re doing? You got an album coming out?’ I was like, ‘No, it’s a mixtape.’ They were like, ‘We want to buy it off you. We want to put that out.’ I was getting crazy offers.
“Bob Perry—who I was dealing with off and on—gave me $200,000 for something I was about to put out for free. When he gave me that bread, of course they’re going to try and treat it like an album because they’re trying to make money off the shit. But in reality, everybody knows my albums is H.N.I.C., that’s it. I only do H.N.I.C. albums.
Prodigy “The Life” (2008)
Produced by: The Alchemist
Prodigy: “When you put the album on you hear this lady talking about the Illuminati, gold, oil, and drugs. That’s what their G.O.D. stands for. The next song you hear is ‘Real Power Is People.’ It says, ‘Money is worthless, real power is people/Fuck jewelry, fuck rims, let’s spend on our protection.’ That was my rebellious song where I was going at the system.
“I was going at that whole lifestyle. I decided to say fuck that lifestyle and to tell people to snap out of it. There’s more important things. You don’t have to copycat that shit, just be yourself. And it was my plan to never wear jewelry again and all the other bullshit. So I was showing people where I was headed with that song.
“But then the next song that comes on is ‘The Life.’ That was one of the songs off Return Of The Mac that we were like, ‘Nah, this is too hot. Let’s save this for the album.’ On that, I’m talking about Ferraris, diamonds, and all the other shit that we’re addicted to. It’s just showing the contrary, like this is what a nigga wants to do, but the problem is niggas is addicted to shit. [Laughs.]
“I’m just showing the struggle that niggas is going through. I went through my little struggles already with the money and I still got that shit in me because that’s what I do. Everybody knows me from my chains like, ‘Yo, what kind of piece is P going to have on this album?’ The jewelry, the fashion, and the cars—that’s the life I came up living before I was a rapper. So it’s just hard to snap out of that shit. Like, I still got to throw on a little something, some nice clothes and shit. [Laughs.].”
Prodigy “Illuminati” (2008)
Produced by: The Alchemist
Prodigy: “That song was recorded out in Cali, at Alchemist’s studio. It was an ill beat that Al had at the crib. As soon as I heard it I just started writing to that shit. I think I wrote the song in like 40 minutes or an hour, and just recorded it. That shit came out kind of hot, and the chorus I use on there I just took from my rhymes from LL Cool J’s ‘I Shot Ya.’ I decided to just take that and make a whole song out of it. I knew Jay-Z had used part of it for one of his songs, but I wanted to make a whole song. His song wasn’t about that shit. So that’s where that comes from.
“It was one of the last songs I did before I turned myself in. We started the album before the gun trial, the arrest, and all that shit. It just pushed me to work harder. It pushed me to create more music. I had to think of concepts for videos, and try to rush. A lot of those videos for H.N.I.C. 2 were quick, rushed videos. A lot of that stuff is just some bullshit, to tell you the truth. [Laughs.] We had the camcorders like, ‘Alright, let’s go shoot around the corner.’ None of those videos on H.N.I.C. 2 compare to ‘Mac 10 Handle,’ ‘Stuck On You,’ and the more serious shit that we do. I just wanted to have as much visual content as possible while I was in prison.”