Today we lost a Street Poet who penned one of the greatest gangster rap verses ever. RIP Prodigy
![prodigy.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmcR8MWKpcbFvxoPKiPQ2Ygk2Eykjnp8w9YZCvGjRC7qB8/prodigy.jpg)
Backdrop
Reasons, season or lifetime
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I was once told that occasionally people come into your life for seasons. I think the same also applies for music. Music genres comes in and out of your life for a season. For it seems a lifetime ago, when I was into gangster rap.
I was barely a teenager when I first heard Straight Outta Compton in 1989. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before. Music made by kids, slightly older than me, with a completely different slang, across the other side of the world, however spreading a message that resonated to my core. I could recite the lyrics to that album word for word and often did so on the back of a 277 bus on the way to school. When I found out that Ice Cube had penned most of the lyrics on the album I was in awe. He was easily my favourite rapper at the time.
Lion Hunting
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Other generations and cultures have rites of passage to mark the transition from boyhood into manhood. Women have menstruation. Me. I had gangster rap.
It wasn’t the glorification of violence, the misogyny that struck a chord. It was the passion, the poetry and attitude. The ability to make sense of the nonsense of growing up in a ghetto. Whether that ghetto was in Compton or East London. I knew what it felt like to be a kid around criminality, witnesses absolute craziness and being treated as guilty by association. The ability to rise above that, and more critically find success on your own terms, whilst sticking up two fingers to the establishment, was something to aspire to!
My generation
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It was so easy for people that do not understand the environment, to condemn the product of the environment. Whilst older people and those in ivy towers focused on the superficial content, me and my friends at the time focused on the substance. As Dr Dre put it so eloquently on Niggaz 4 Life;
Why do I call myself a nigga you ask me?
Cos my mouth is some motherfuckin nasty
Bitch this, bitch that, nigga this, nigga that,
In the mean, while my pockets are getting fat!
Getting paid to say this shit here,
Making more in a week, then a doctor makes in a year
So why not call myself a nigga?
It’s better than pulling a trigger, and going up the river.
Todays loss
Shook
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By the time I’d heard Shook Ones by Mobb Deep in 1995, I’d already OD’ed on gangster rap. I’d moved on by then and had lost my passion for rap. My gangster rap season was over. I was around eighteen or nineteen. I was into girls and parties. I wasn’t trying to sit around on staircases in Tower Block flats with my boys listening gangster rap anymore.
I was also a DJ. On the day I first heard Prodigy rap, I walked into Wyld Pytch Records in Soho. The guys there knew I was only interested in party tracks. When they pulled out a rap album for me to listen to I rolled my eyes. ‘Ain’t no party, I’m DJ-ing at going to want to hear that shit. Give me the party hits!’
The man behind the counter played Shook Ones…. Prodigy’s verse kicked.
I got you stuck off the realness, we be the infamous
You heard of us, official Queensbridge murderers
For a minute, all my feelings as a twelve year old listen to NWA for the first time came back. Prodigy wasn’t rapping. He talking to me. Reminding me of the struggle. I bought the album. It’s one of the few albums that sit amongst my 12 inch single collection. Prodigy and Havoc were one of rap's greatest duos.
Passing
![prodigy-mobb-deep.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQme9XHXtwaUEe81A6ZuQEPYNdFw5EHRCChSEXqFr71xHrT/prodigy-mobb-deep.jpg)
So today, as I was watching Netflix, my three little girls tucked up in bed, my Mobb Deep album gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere, my wife asked me... "Have you heard of Prodigy from 'The' Mobb Deep." I nodded. "He died, it's all over Twitter."
I looked around my home. Had I really gotten that old already?
Albert Johnson was only 42 when he passed today. He died due to complications linked to sickle cell anemia. I'll still maintain, that in terms of relevancy and capturing a zeitgeist, his verse that opened up Shook Ones was one of the best gangster rap verses written. One of our great street poets to rank alongside the likes of living legends Ice Cube, Nas, Jay-Z and Slick Rick has been laid to rest alongside dead poets 2 Pac, Big and Big L.
I'm only 19, but my mind is old
When the things get for real, my warm heart turns cold
Another nigga deceased, another story gets told
It ain't nothing really, ayo, Dun, spark the Philly
Alas, when your body catches up with your mind, you realise loss is something "really".
This caught my eye, heard the news all day.... hip hop was and is a part of my life and always will be.
This post by you is a good one, lots of elements to this, on both sides of the street here my friend.
Nice work today on this.
and I am proud to say even with my low voting power, I am glad my vote pushed that up a few dollars over the $900 mark for you, it seems fitting given the rap game and the cultural struggles here on Steemit at times, and out in the streets today and always.
(:
“The UFO came to my house to show me the light, as if to say, 'Wake up, nigga! Snap out of it! We are real and you are important to us! Okay, we gotta go for now, hope you're ready when we come back!”
― Albert Johnson, My Infamous Life: The Autobiography of Mobb Deep's Prodigy
“Throughout my life, I have always lived through adversity, I’m a survivor. You don’t understand the mental power that I have. While I am locked up, I’m going to be writing lyrics, working on the script for my second feature film, Dope, and finish writing an autobiography of my life which will be finished by the time I’m released..”
-Prodigy(Albert Johnson) -
Ridiculous news, man. I remember "Hell on Earth" being a stand-out anthemic album growing up as a young adult. Loved it to bits! And to die at such a young age? A warrior of innovative hip-hop and rap has left us way too soon.
RIP, Prodigy...
@nanzo-scoop, I shed a few tears reading the last parts of this post. I have a friend whose son has sickle cell anemia. Each time I see him, I fear for his life.
RIP to the deceased.
I remember when Nas went in on Prodigy with his Destroy and Rebuild track. Man, there is no such thing as half way crooks
Rest in peace genius . I was listening him since i was 14 , even tho I didn't understand English at all ! That's the beauty of the music (hip-hop ,rap) that u don't even need to understand the lyrics, just feel the rhythm , feel the rhyme...
Absolutely and the struggle depicted speaks far beyond what we dealt with here. It spoke to similar struggles around the world.
Mobb Deep had some brilliant tracks that changed my perspective on hip-hop, RIP to the legend!
he died so young,
loved mobb deep since early days but stopped checkin em after they went to 50 cent label - its became too newschool to me.
thats one of my favs
and of course with CNN
Hip Hop was and will always be a big part of my life.....
Al right! We all agree here guys! It's good to see so many fans in here.
My Gr. 13 / OAC English project worth half my year's mark was done on Hip Hop culture.
A few of my friends have dropped albums.
Maybe you have heard of one of them...... K-OS?
He lived about 5 mins from my place.
RIP Prodigy... we lost a legend today. Shook Ones Pt. II is one of the best gangsta raps of all time.
Even though he died at a relatively young age, he lived a fuller life than many of us even dare to!
At least we still have 2pac haha^^
RIP, one of the best, but the best die young.
42 is way too young :(