One was Schott Free, an A&R at Loud Records and former member of the short-lived rap group Legion of D.U.M.E. Their music took on a grimmer, darker tone.Ī few key people took notice. It was out of this brew of desperation and determination that The Infamous began to take shape. A revolution was brewing in their own city, and the authors of puerile kiddie sex raps like " Hit it From the Back" were in danger of getting left behind forever. In New York, things were getting increasingly serious– Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), also released in '93, had already shipped platinum by May of '94. They retreated, licking their wounds, to Havoc's mother's house. Shortly afterward, Mobb Deep were dropped from their label. In his 2011 memoir My Infamous Life, Prodigy recalls "Halftime" pumping out of the speakers at what was supposed to be a Mobb Deep in-store in D.C. At every radio interview, Havoc and P found themselves answering questions about Havoc's Queensbridge neighbor Nas. Johnson and Muchita had already gotten their shot, releasing a corny, forgettable debut called Juvenile Hell in 1993 that sold 20,000 copies before being dwarfed by Illmatic, which had already traveled the world as a demo before its official release in April of '94.
The song was a rebirth, and the album that it foreshadowed would rewrite their legacy entirely.
II" is maybe the most effective, and certainly the most devastating. It announced The Infamous, Mobb Deep's second album and their first classic, and in the canon of career-revitalizing rap singles-Kool Moe Dee's "How Ya Like Me Now", LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out", Dre's "Still D.R.E."-"Shook Ones Pt. Playing the sample back to back with its source does absolutely nothing to resolve the mystery of "Shook Ones Pt II."įor the kids who made it-Albert "Prodigy" Johnson, from Hempstead, and Kejuan "Havoc" Muchita, from Queensbridge-"Shook Ones Pt. The line is so disorienting that it inspired a sixteen-year long hunt for its source, which only ended in 2011 when producer Havoc confessed that sample snitches had finally pinpointed their target – a three-second piece of a Herbie Hancock instrumental, sped up and then slowed down. An even stranger sound follows it: four notes played on either a guitar imitating a piano or a piano imitating a guitar. But it also might be an exploding steam pipe, or a car alarm, or a laser-jet printer. II" is one of rap's most perfect sounds-but what is it? It might be a horn.
The foreboding, faraway skree announcing Mobb Deep's "Shook Ones Pt.
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