by Damian Garde
Daily Lobo
Hip-hop isn't always kind to its elder statesmen.
Just ask Prodigy of Mobb Deep, who, after seeing platinum sales and critical acclaim, has been filed away as a has-been by rap amnesiacs.
Back in 1993, when Prodigy got his start with the Mobb, his bleak descriptions of ghetto nihilism shook fans and critics. Alongside partner Havoc, he seemed to welcome his own death while handing out vicious threats to his competitors, famously promising to "rock you in your face (and) stab your brain with your nose bone." Prodigy took the gritty tales of his forebears and stripped away any semblance of a message or morality play. Instead, P's lyrics dwelled on morbid reflections of lives lost in gang warfare, defined best by the title of the Mobb's first album, Juvenile Hell.
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However, as trends in hip-hop shifted toward more party-friendly topics, the Mobb struggled to adapt. The group's undoing would culminate in 2001, when Jay-Z unveiled photos of a 14-year-old Prodigy clad in a New Edition-style dance outfit before thousands of fans at the Summer Jam festival.
Prodigy never tendered a reply, and the Mobb's popularity continued to wane. An ill-advised deal with G-Unit brought 2006's disappointing Blood Money, garnering a lukewarm critical response and sales low enough to become a punch line in Cam'ron's affronts toward 50 Cent. The series of events led many to write the duo off as relics from a bygone era of rap history.
As such, when P resurfaced last month with Return of the Mac, I expected another rehash of former greatness coupled with blatant attempts at mainstream acceptance. Instead, Prodigy, backed by superproducer Alchemist, delivered a harrowing account of his personal doubts, suicidal tendencies and psychotic temper.
The album's lead single, "Mac 10 Handle," finds P taking a page from the homicidal paranoia of the Geto Boys' 1991 classic "Mind Playing Tricks on Me." He sits "alone in (his) dirty-ass room, staring at candles, high on drugs," and the accompanying straight-to-YouTube video depicts him cleaning his handguns and rabidly swinging a knife at demons in his mirror.
Alchemist matches Prodigy's lyrical grit with beats pilfered from dusty blaxploitation soundtracks, granting an air of classicism to P's claims of toting box cutters and debating suicide.
"The Rotten Apple" is perhaps Prodigy's bleakest look at himself since "Shook Ones Pt. II" back in 1995. Melancholy guitars underscore his confessions of hopelessness as he threatens to make snuff films of those who doubt him, finally lamenting, "The Rotten Apple made me
like this."
Prodigy seems to see himself as hip-hop's King Lear, looking back at his old kingdom and questioning how it all went wrong. The album's cover best illustrates this overarching theme, depicting Prodigy and Alchemist outfitted like Bumpy Johnson and Dutch Schultz, puffing cigars and peering out of stained tenement windows at the haggard metropolis below.
The only closure P offers is "Legends," where he reflects on his rough childhood and lifelong struggle with sickle cell anemia. Over a lilting Rita Wright sample, Prodigy distills his entire life to a simple mantra: "Live fast and stall death as long as possible; get cash and put threats in
the hospital."
