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The Infamous
It’s hard to believe that hip-hop is only about 47 years old, give or take a year or two. So many memories, iconic figures, highs, lows … the genre brings about a wealth of emotion, regardless of one’s demographic. As hip-hop has grown, so has its sound, its reach, as well as its influence on popular culture. But during its infancy, the rapper and the DJ were the perfect marriage between two musicians of different crafts blending together to make a singular sound.
The indelible legacy of Mobb Deep’s 1995 album, The Infamous, will be that it helped shift the content of hip-hop back towards a more journalistic, documentary style of music. At the time, Black cinema was also following a similar trend. Screenwriters and directors such as John Singleton, Ernest Dickerson, and the Hughes brothers made it a point to change the narrative of how a large number of people had previously viewed African American films.
The East Coast Renaissance of the early-to-mid ’90s was an important time in hip-hop music. During this period, albums such as Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), Illmatic, and Ready to Die reset the standard not only for New York artists, but for the genre of rap itself. Hailing from the Queensbridge housing projects, Albert “Prodigy” Johnson and Kejuan “Havoc” Muchita released an underwhelming debut album in 1993, which subsequently led to them being dropped from their label about a year later. Pressure can either bust pipes or create a diamond, and in 1995, they opted for the latter.
