Mobb Deep

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About Mobb Deep

Mobb Deep's murky, graphically detailed hip-hop made them one of the 1990s' most celebrated acts, every bit the artistic peer of stars like Notorious B.I.G. and Wu-Tang Clan. Havoc and Prodigy grew up in the New York borough of Queens but met as teenagers at Manhattan's High School of Art and Design in the early '90s, bonding through music. Their raw, unpolished debut, Juvenile Hell, got their feet in the door, but 1995's follow-up, The Infamous, forged their distinctive identity. Havoc produced haunting, suffocating sounds, and Prodigy delivered relentlessly violent, nihilistic rhymes with stone-faced intensity and inventive slang. Cinematic street credos like "Shook Ones (Pt. II)" made them a symbol of the toughness of East Coast hip-hop's golden era. Subsequent years saw beefs with 2Pac, Jay-Z and Nas, but Mobb Deep never let up creatively: Hell On Earth (1996) was even more venomous than its predecessor, and Murda Muzik (1999) featured the canonical "Quiet Storm (Remix)" with Lil Kim. In 2006, the duo signed to G-Unit Records and released Blood Money, scoring assists from 50 Cent while adding sheen to their cavernous sound. They closed the decade on hiatus due to personal issues, releasing music individually until reuniting for 2014's double-disc, The Infamous Mobb Deep. Their eighth and final album was a completionist's bliss—17 new songs revived their signature street Darwinism, and a batch of rare and unreleased 1994 sessions from the aforementioned The Infamous satisfied nostalgists. Prodigy died in 2017 after lifelong struggles with sickle cell anemia, and Havoc told Apple Music it feels "incomplete" to reminisce without his partner. But as acts like Roc Marciano and Griselda emulate the creepy melodies and unflinching menace that Hav and P pioneered, Mobb Deep live on.

ORIGIN
Queens, NY, United States
FORMED
1993
GENRE
Hip-Hop/Rap
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