What's happening folks, and happy 2019 to everyone. We made it y'all, and it's time to look forward to incredible new music this year. This year also marks the twentieth anniversary of a number of unforgettable albums, and this is where we come in. As we approached a new millennium, artists such as DMX, Snoop Dogg, The Roots, Nas, and Jay-Z were delivering tremendous music for our ears, while new artists such as MF DOOM, Pharoahe Monch (as a solo artist), Mos Def, and some bleached blonde, blue-eyed phenom from Detroit made his debut as well. This was a memorable year, but first we will salute a duo who's penchant for vivid rhymes of street lore and visceral production made them be among the most in-demand duos in all of hip-hop. Their '95 effort, The Infamous, is forever regarded as a hip-hop monument and tried and true classic. Their follow-up, Hell On Earth, was even more macabre and even more venomous. With two near platinum albums on deck, and their name consistently bubbling in the streets, as well as the mainstream, it was only a matter of time before they hit that one million, but they needed the album to accomplish it, and MAN did they! This salute goes to the legendary, but Infamous, Mobb Deep and their fourth album, Murda Muzik.
It had been three years since they dropped the simply awesome Hell On Earth album, and with Havoc getting more and more production duties on various efforts and the late, great Prodigy KILLING guest spots all over the place, the anticipation was mounting. Finally the announcement was made that Murda Muzik was coming, and the streets were nuts with the coming of a new Hav and P effort. Would they go three for three in terms of classics? All it took was one hit of "Quiet Storm" to answer that one. Over a sampling of "White Lines" by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, P ripped a hole in this cut with Hav providing the anthemic hook. If that wasn't enough, they dropped a remix with new verses from P, Hav and a guest spot from Lil' Kim (I challenge anybody to tell me P didn't have a verse of the year candidate with his sixteen). However, the anticipation was so hot, the bootleggers went bananas with it and leaked the original pressing to the streets. While discouraging, P and Hav took some cuts off such as "Nobody Likes Me", the P solo cut "Pile Raps", the Onyx-collab "QB Meets South Suicide", "Perfect Plot" and "Thrill Me", and added cuts like the second single, the Scarface-sampled collab with Nas, "It's Mine", "Spread Love", and "Can't Fuck Wit" with Raekwon so if you have the original pressing, consider yourself fortunate. The new tracks were fire, however, as they still kept the hard-nosed gun raps that help emphasize the Mobb's notorious artistic aura.
From the jump, we got the melodic "Streets Raised Me" and from there cuts like "I'm Going Out" with Lil' Cease and the Cormega-assisted "What's Your Poison" sound like a slightly new direction for the Mobb, albeit still dope. Then, here comes the haunting and classic Mobb cut "Allustrious", complete with a chilling organ loop and enough thump to make your neck cramp, as well the following cut, "Adrenaline", which was equally as ferocious. Clearly by mid-album, you realize they did it again. The nihilism wasn't over, as other cuts like the title track, "Thug Muzik" and the blistering Kool G. Rap-assisted "The Realest" were consistent rotators and perfectly fitting for an album of this magnitude. We even got a bit of vulnerability from the otherwise sadistic Hav and P with "Where Ya Heart At" (especially Hav in his dedication to his late brother Killa Black).
This was another example of how remarkable of a duo these two QB kids were in the late nineties. This album was not only another insane release from them, this marked their first platinum album. The Mobb had officially arrived, and with Murda Muzik, it was clear their star power had officially risen to power. While the original pressing was possibly even better, this version was super strong and excellently showed the chemistry that Hav and P naturally had. In much the same respects as the likes of EPMD, Mobb Deep hit legendary status with this monster of an album, and once and for all shut down any talk of any concerns of a fall off for this album. While subsequent albums such as Infamy, Amerika'z Nightmare and Blood Money didn't quite live up to the Mobb standard we had expected from them, The Infamous Mobb Deep was a return to what we had known from them. Still, this album was a certifiably head-cracker. We salute the god Bandana P (rest in power man) and the mighty Havoc for this epic piece of music. Happy twentieth!
No comments:
Post a Comment