Happy 20th Anniversary Salute: H.N.I.C.

What's going on happy people?! This twentieth anniversary salute goes out to an album that once and for all established this emcee as a seminal artist and mic handler during this time.  He was already one of the most in demand emcees around with his no holds barred, chilling delivery and vivid, tough guy talk rhymes.  Being one half of one of the most compelling and influential duos in all of hip-hop, Mobb Deep, he was fully saturated in acclaim already with prior albums like the unforgettable classic, The Infamous, its insane follow-up, Hell On Earth, and their breakout album, the double-platinum selling, Murda Muzik.  It was finally time for him to step out on his own for a solo effort, and this album reminded people of why he needed to be mentioned again of why he was among the true elite in hip-hop circles.  We salute the late, great Prodigy of Mobb Deep and his solo debut, H.N.I.C.

From the moment we saw that epic image of Albert Johnson on a throne of ice with the letters 'H', 'N', "I', and 'C' carved in to the throne, we knew another quiet storm was coming soon in the form of a solo album.  When the storm came, it dropped more fury with it.  We got a first taste of what we were in for with the thunderous first single, the Alchemist-crafted, hook-less banger, "Keep It Thoro".  P obliterated this single with lines a-plenty and bars that made us put P among the best in the first place.  The second single was "Y.B.E. (Young Black Entrepreneurs)" with Cash Money Millionaire and former Hot Boy, B.G.  The cut, which obviously highlighted being your own boss and making big moves, was heavily sampling Whodini's "One Love", but in all due respect to Whodini, "One Love" never sounded so gangsta.  These cuts set the way for what would be an excellent album for Bandana P.

Folks, P never softened his blow not one bit on this album.  While he was more of a thinking thug on this release, he was also his nihilistic best with tracks like the epic title track, "Infamous Minded", "Gun Play", and the ice-cold "Wanna Be Thugs" with partner in rhyme, Havoc.  These cuts are vintage Mobb and puts you at relative ease if you were wondering if P would loosen the pressure on your neck just because he went solo.  With contributors such as Rockwilder and Just Blaze providing some of the boardwork, some of the sounds on here could be heard on the radio such as the aforementioned "Gun Play", "Diamond", and "Do It", and you could add the knocking Bink-produced "Rock Dat" to the same list.  However, he gets painfully serious on a couple of tracks as well.  On the track, "Veterans Memorial", over a melancholy Alchemist track, he reminisces on those that were gone and how he's handling them all being gone.  Very surreal stuff, especially in retrospect.  It especially got real on the haunting track, "You Can Never Feel My Pain", in which he vividly details his struggles with sickle cell anemia and how the dreaded condition pushed him to depression and tending to drugs and alcohol to cope.  For anyone who either suffered through it themselves or those who knew people who has suffered through it (R.I.P. to my childhood homeboy June!) this was a particularly poignant cut that resonated.

For those that wanted a complete and fluid album from P, they got it.  This was a big time album and it put P as not just a sociopath with a fetish for guns and crime, but it also pulled back some of the covers to realize there was also a method to his madness as well as a source of his anger and pain.  For later solo albums such as H.N.I.C. Pt. 2, H.N.I.C. Pt. 3, The Bumpy Johnson Story, Return Of The Mac, Albert Einstein and his final; album, the much talked about Hegelian Dialectic: Book Of Revelations all demonstrated his profound talent on the mic as well as being quite the storyteller, it was H.N.I.C. that made it all official.  We all wanted to know how it would be like to do an effort without Hav, and we found out, and was very pleasantly pleased.  Nearly three years removed from his untimely (and very questionable) death, the game hasn't been the same without P.  His talent of the pen and his rhymes and knack for telling some of the most thugged out stories known to man are gone.  We lift our glasses, not just to commemorate the greatness of H.N.I.C. and its twentieth year of blessing our ears, but to the memory of the best emcees we've ever had the privilege of hearing.  He taught us what "Shook Ones" were, his put his lifetime in between the paper's lines, and taught us that there was a war going on outside no man was safe from.  We toast to the memory of Albert "Prodigy" Johnson.  Long live P.  Long live the Mobb.  Salute and rest in Him! Until next time folks!