RIP Prodigy of Mobb Deep
- Thread starter DJCandle
- Start date
Trife Life, Just Step, and Temperature Rising.
Off of just these 3 tracks, for me, his Legend was built.
P, you mad Senior Summer '95, EPIC!
Rest in music...
Off of just these 3 tracks, for me, his Legend was built.
P, you mad Senior Summer '95, EPIC!
Rest in music...
Damn....nothing reminds you of your own mortality more than fixtures from your life dying! RIP
RIP
-unfortunately a loss like this reminds you how great someone's impact actually was, and you may have taken for granted.
-unfortunately a loss like this reminds you how great someone's impact actually was, and you may have taken for granted.
Phife,Prince,Price,Prodigy
Love u all
Rip
Love u all
Rip
.
Prodigy, My Favorite Rapper
By EDDIE HUANG
June 21, 2017
Op-Ed Contributor
Prodigy, of the rap duo Mobb Deep, performing in 2016.
Gian Ehrenzeller / European Pressphoto Agency
Everyone knows which rappers are the greatest of all time: some combination of Rakim, Nas, the Notorious BIG and, since “Blueprint” dropped in 2001, Jay-Z. But I don’t care who’s the greatest; I want to know who’s your favorite.
These are mine, in no particular order: Cam’ron, Andre 3000, Young Jeezy, Ghostface, Raekwon, Kanye, Malice, Noreaga, Geechi Suede from Camp Lo and Prodigy, who died this week from complications of sickle cell anemia at the age of 42.
The first time I met P, as everyone called him, it was the summer of 2011 and he had just gotten out of prison. He was on his way to perform at Summer Jam, a New York rite of passage for any hip-hop head, thrown annually by the Hot 97 radio station. I’d been a fan of his rap duo, Mobb Deep, for years. So when I got a heads-up that he was planning to eat at Baohaus, the restaurant I own, I couldn’t sleep the night before. I waited for him to arrive, wearing my “Infamous Mobb Deep” T-shirt and matching red sneakers.
My exuberance didn’t bother P. When he was done eating, he asked me if I liked “tennis clothes,” then went back into his S.U.V. and pulled out a bag of vintage Le Coq Sportif tops: “I got them for the whole crew. You want one?” I couldn’t accept. I was in shock. Prodigy basically just offered me the Le Coq Sportif off his back because he knew what it would mean to me.
A few months later, I did a scene with P for an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “The Layover” in which he told everyone on camera that he loved reading Popular Science while he was locked up and that his favorite dish was Mongolian beef from the P. F. Chang’s chain. It wasn’t that P didn’t understand the expectations of foodies watching the show; he was going to show love to the cultural artifacts that held him down regardless of what anyone else thought.
About a year later, P pulled up to my 30th-birthday party, stood on a couch and performed his classic, “Shook Ones,” screaming, “Ayo E, spark the Philly!” My friend Steven Lau actually teared up that night, telling me: “You made it, man. P remixed ‘Shook Ones’ for your birthday.”
P didn’t have to do any of it. That’s just what he was like.
When we’re kids, our favorites are usually whatever is most popular. Why else are so many children wearing hideous “Chef” Curry Under Armour sneakers? We fiend for influences, emulate them and would do anything to hurry up and be adults. In adolescence we’re mature enough to see through the lies and determine who’s real and who’s not. We resist “store-bought rap” and prefer the “insane man who strike back,” as Prodigy put it. We start to wonder why we’re all here watching as the world slowly turns on itself. When I felt that way, it was “Losin’ Weight” by Cam’ron, featuring Prodigy, that picked me up. It became one of my favorites.
Why I feel like I’m losin’ weight?
Why I got no money, if I’m movin’ weight?
Why my life based upon what I’mma do today
Why I can’t move away
Thirteen years later, the dedication quote for my first book came from that song. The quote for my next book was from P, too: “Now take these words home and think it through or the next rhyme I write might be about you.”
The older we get, the less we want to admit our influences. Credit gets buried. The narrative changes from one about a man raised by a village to one about a man who rose out of the water, a self-made island, and doesn’t want to pay taxes. But you never forget your favorites — the people who revealed something to you, the ones who gave you a piece of themselves, and through that revelation got you closer to the meaning of your own life.
Rap music raised me, despite the haters that have questioned its ability to inform me in an authentic manner because of my skin color or their skin color, or my time spent in Orlando, Fla., or P’s time in the Queensbridge projects of New York.
When someone tells you they read Socrates or Shakespeare or Twain, you don’t question their authenticity. You don’t question the work’s power. The works are canonical. I put Prodigy in the same category; a Hemingway-like character who was physical and visceral. His language was never overly ornate; it would “rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone.” Hip-hop was the most honest lens I found in the American wilderness outside my Taiwanese-Chinese home, and Prodigy’s story about hell on earth was one of its finest.
One day people will stop being surprised that Mobb Deep was so influential to someone like me. They won’t see a cultural chasm between two men who became family over the past six years. I started off worshiping Prodigy the rapper, but today I miss Prodigy my friend. If he wasn’t your favorite rapper, he should have been.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/...e-rapper.html?referer=https://www.google.com/
By EDDIE HUANG
June 21, 2017
Op-Ed Contributor
Prodigy, of the rap duo Mobb Deep, performing in 2016.
Gian Ehrenzeller / European Pressphoto Agency
Everyone knows which rappers are the greatest of all time: some combination of Rakim, Nas, the Notorious BIG and, since “Blueprint” dropped in 2001, Jay-Z. But I don’t care who’s the greatest; I want to know who’s your favorite.
These are mine, in no particular order: Cam’ron, Andre 3000, Young Jeezy, Ghostface, Raekwon, Kanye, Malice, Noreaga, Geechi Suede from Camp Lo and Prodigy, who died this week from complications of sickle cell anemia at the age of 42.
The first time I met P, as everyone called him, it was the summer of 2011 and he had just gotten out of prison. He was on his way to perform at Summer Jam, a New York rite of passage for any hip-hop head, thrown annually by the Hot 97 radio station. I’d been a fan of his rap duo, Mobb Deep, for years. So when I got a heads-up that he was planning to eat at Baohaus, the restaurant I own, I couldn’t sleep the night before. I waited for him to arrive, wearing my “Infamous Mobb Deep” T-shirt and matching red sneakers.
My exuberance didn’t bother P. When he was done eating, he asked me if I liked “tennis clothes,” then went back into his S.U.V. and pulled out a bag of vintage Le Coq Sportif tops: “I got them for the whole crew. You want one?” I couldn’t accept. I was in shock. Prodigy basically just offered me the Le Coq Sportif off his back because he knew what it would mean to me.
A few months later, I did a scene with P for an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “The Layover” in which he told everyone on camera that he loved reading Popular Science while he was locked up and that his favorite dish was Mongolian beef from the P. F. Chang’s chain. It wasn’t that P didn’t understand the expectations of foodies watching the show; he was going to show love to the cultural artifacts that held him down regardless of what anyone else thought.
About a year later, P pulled up to my 30th-birthday party, stood on a couch and performed his classic, “Shook Ones,” screaming, “Ayo E, spark the Philly!” My friend Steven Lau actually teared up that night, telling me: “You made it, man. P remixed ‘Shook Ones’ for your birthday.”
P didn’t have to do any of it. That’s just what he was like.
When we’re kids, our favorites are usually whatever is most popular. Why else are so many children wearing hideous “Chef” Curry Under Armour sneakers? We fiend for influences, emulate them and would do anything to hurry up and be adults. In adolescence we’re mature enough to see through the lies and determine who’s real and who’s not. We resist “store-bought rap” and prefer the “insane man who strike back,” as Prodigy put it. We start to wonder why we’re all here watching as the world slowly turns on itself. When I felt that way, it was “Losin’ Weight” by Cam’ron, featuring Prodigy, that picked me up. It became one of my favorites.
Why I feel like I’m losin’ weight?
Why I got no money, if I’m movin’ weight?
Why my life based upon what I’mma do today
Why I can’t move away
Thirteen years later, the dedication quote for my first book came from that song. The quote for my next book was from P, too: “Now take these words home and think it through or the next rhyme I write might be about you.”
The older we get, the less we want to admit our influences. Credit gets buried. The narrative changes from one about a man raised by a village to one about a man who rose out of the water, a self-made island, and doesn’t want to pay taxes. But you never forget your favorites — the people who revealed something to you, the ones who gave you a piece of themselves, and through that revelation got you closer to the meaning of your own life.
Rap music raised me, despite the haters that have questioned its ability to inform me in an authentic manner because of my skin color or their skin color, or my time spent in Orlando, Fla., or P’s time in the Queensbridge projects of New York.
When someone tells you they read Socrates or Shakespeare or Twain, you don’t question their authenticity. You don’t question the work’s power. The works are canonical. I put Prodigy in the same category; a Hemingway-like character who was physical and visceral. His language was never overly ornate; it would “rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone.” Hip-hop was the most honest lens I found in the American wilderness outside my Taiwanese-Chinese home, and Prodigy’s story about hell on earth was one of its finest.
One day people will stop being surprised that Mobb Deep was so influential to someone like me. They won’t see a cultural chasm between two men who became family over the past six years. I started off worshiping Prodigy the rapper, but today I miss Prodigy my friend. If he wasn’t your favorite rapper, he should have been.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/...e-rapper.html?referer=https://www.google.com/
