Eminem would shock you and describe every detail of his tortures. But not punch lines that are jokes and will have you laughing, like Ludacris might instead, they’ll make you run and cry: “Take these words home and think em through / or the next rhyme I write might be about you.” Prodigy’s gangsta rap writing is especially notable for lacking the explicitness of other rappers, like Eminem. What he’s gonna kill you with is punch lines. “Shook Ones” is actually a great summation of Prodigy’s style. However, “Shook Ones” is right up there with “The Message” and “Jesus Walks”, and maybe in contradiction to “Rapper’s Delight.” Some songs in rap that are passed around as classics really aren’t good songs in the first place, or they’ve lost their punch over the years as their details were incorporated into other musician’s songs. 2 having the same effect, even over other boom-bap beats, and that’s what makes it awesome. However, it’s hard to imagine Prodigy’s first verse on shook ones pt. music mixtape, the “Clique” raps could have been spit over any Hit-Boy beat. For instance, as much as I like the beats on the G.O.O.D.

This makes it unlike other sub-genres of rap that have material that could be interchanged.

Dre between N.W.A, G-funk, and Chronic: 2001, or Kanye West from…any album to the next.Īlthough I was talking mostly about his production there, for the best gangsta rap, the production informs the content of the rap, and not the other way around. He certainly wasn’t able to make the same rapping leap as Jean Grae from her Attack Of The Attacking Things to her Cookies Or Comas mixtape, or even the production leap of Dr. He was so good at gangsta rap for so long he might never have felt a need to diversify beyond the urban material that predominates his poetry.

In a way, Prodigy might be a victim of his own success.

In any event, the very dynamic of Mobb Deep as a group – just two guys, including a rapper producer, who collaborate on every album – is truer to the dynamic of rap than a group of 9 amazing rappers and businessmen, which is completely unique in the rap world.

Prodigy rapper