To All The Killers And The 100 Dollar Billas

Time has not been kind to the members of Mobb Deep. After releasing a string of classic albums in the nineties, the Queensbridge duo of Prodigy and Havoc have struggled this decade, diluting their sound in response to waning commercial fortunes and seeing old rival Jay-Z rise to undreamt of heights. Their signing to 50 Cent's G-Unit label proved to be the final nail in the coffin, with last year's Blood Money being a rather lame attempt to fit their distinctive talents into an album of club-friendly and guest-heavy 50 cast-off tracks. In truth, the duo never really recovered from Jay's diss on "The Takeover" in 2001, where he memorably ridiculed them for being short-arses and revealed Prodigy's childhood predeliction for ballet. Back in 95' though, with the release of their second album The Infamous they were one of the groups at the forefront of a new kind of gritty, street-level rap, and "Shook Ones Part II" still stands as one of the essential artifacts of early nineties hip-hop. Prodigy and Havoc may have met at Manhattan's prestigious High School of Art and Design (Previous alumni include Calvin Klein and Tony Bennett, fact fans!), but you wouldn't know it from this track, where they play the cold-eyed thugs to perfection. Havoc was one of the great exponents of the sparse, minimal sound that the RZA pioneered on Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and "Shook Ones" is one of his most striking productions. Pared down to the absolute essential elements, the track is built around a sinuous guitar lick, filled out with almost subliminal bass hits, cavernous, echoing drums and intermittent bursts of synth noise. Over this suitably cinematic backing, Prodigy coolly lays out the group's brutal philosophy, if something as simplistic can even be called such. In essence, there's Mobb Deep and there's the rest of the world, the "halfway crooks" of the title. Prodigy's opening verse remains one of the best in hip-hop, as he informs us in casually chilling fashion: "Im only nineteen but my mind is old/And when the things get for real my warm heart turns cold/Another nigga deceased, another story gets told/It aint nothin really." The verse ends with a comforting piece of advice "Now, take these words home and think it through/Or the next rhyme I write might be about you" I mean Jay-Z may have pictures of the dude in a ballet costume, but would you fuck with him?

Mobb Deep - Shook Ones Part II