Number One Chief Rocka

You cannot be a rap music fan living in New York State if you don’t like “The Infamous” album from Mobb Deep. In a mere 2 short years they went from “Juvenile Hell” to the epitome of grimy, gritty, hardcore rap. Havoc and Prodigy whip out their paint brushes and paint a picture of ghetto life with the skill of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. KRS might have laid out a blueprint and Jay-Z might has dropped his own version, but this album could be classified as the blueprint of a hardcore East Coast Album at the tail end of perhaps rap music’s greatest era. Prodigy is the main vocalist while Havoc provides the beats. When the backup rapper drops verses that would put some of the best artists out at the time to shame, you know you are listening to a masterpiece.

“The Infamous” is an album that seems to be slept on in the grand scheme of things. The Mobb’s follow up album “Hell on Earth” was a worthy follow up, but unfortunately after that album the Mobb started to slip. While I still checked out all their albums, in my opinion, they lost their edge. They had made their money. They were no longer struggling to survive in the hood. They lost their grit, their hunger their toughness. Now they had loot and were chilling with the rest of the Cristal sipping big money rappers. This is almost single handedly the reason why I think rap music started to suck…but that’s just me. Either way, I’ll be tapping the 2nd and 3rd Mobb Deep albums for excellent verses. I’ll start off the Mobb presence here with a verse from probably my favorite track – “Survival of the Fittest”.

There's a war goin on outside, no man is safe from
You could run but you can't hide forever
from these, streets, that we done took
You walkin witcha head down scared to look
You shook, cause ain't no such things as halfway crooks
They never around when the beef cooks in my part of town
It's similar to Vietnam
Now we all grown up and old, and beyond the cop's control
They better have the riot gear ready
Tryin to bag me and get rocked steady
by the mac one-double, I touch you
and leave you with not much to go home wit
My skin is thick, cause I be up in the mix of action
if I'm not at home, puffin lye relaxin
New York got a nigga depressed
So I wear a slug-proof underneath my Guess
God bless my soul, before I put my foot down and begin to stroll
And to the drama I built, and all unfinished beef
You will soon be killed, put us together
It's like mixin vodka and milk
I'm goin out blastin, takin my enemies with me
and if not, they scarred, so they will never forget me
Lord forgive me the Hennesey got me not knowin how to act
I'm fallin and I can't turn back
or maybe it's the words from my man Killa Black
that I can't say so it's left a untold fact, until my death
My goal's to stay alive
Survival of the fit only the strong survive