Mobb Deep - Shook Ones, Pt. II
To All the Killers and a Hundred Dollar Billers
Shook Ones, Pt. II remains the most nihilistic, fiercest track from the tail end of hip-hop’s golden era - the final word from a magnificent era coming 53 weeks after Nas’ Illmatic. What could possibly come after this? Rappers couldn’t keep recycling the same clichés or the same grievous tales of street life. This is hip-hop’s Goodfellas or Unforgiven, an unflinching gangster tale or a cracked-open Western, both masterpieces so monumental they almost killed their respective genres. Scorsese nailed the New York mob scene with such deadly precision that gangster flicks took a 20-year hiatus, only to be resurrected in long-form television by The Sopranos. Eastwood's Unforgiven didn't just ride off into the sunset; it slammed the Western genre shut until Tarantino and Costner rode in to revive the classic frontier mythos. After this, gangster rap had to gather its thoughts and reevaluate. Curtis Mayfield’s all-world ghetto reporting on Super Fly informs Mobb Deep’s The Infamous in totality, but whereas Curtis took a step back and surveyed Harlem with a journalist’s eye, Mobb Deep’s Prodigy and Havoc give a first-hand testimonial from the Queensbridge Houses. Their work throughout The Infamous, but especially on lead single Shook Ones, Pt. II is a degree of participatory journalism that would leave Wolfe and Thompson equally impressed and mortified.
I can see it inside your face, you're in the wrong place
Cowards like you just get they whole body laced up
With bullet holes and such
Speak the wrong words, man, and you will get touched-Prodigy, Shook Ones, Pt. II
The Queensbridge Houses are the largest public housing development on the continent with about 7,000 souls packed into two complexes. It's home to Nas, Marley Marl, his cousin MC Shan, the former Ron Artest, and interestingly Keechant Sewell, who became the top detective in Nassau County and later the 45th NYC Police Commissioner. The video below is precisely what informed Prodidgy and Havoc throughout their career together as Mobb Deep.
Since the 1980s, New York City’s Queensbridge Housing Project has been documented perhaps better than any other geographic location. Starting with super producer Marley Marl’s dominant Juice Crew in the ’80s all the way through ’90s mainstays like Nas, Cormega and Capone, the Bridge has produced the highest per-capita talent of any ’hood.
Brendan Frederick, XXL columnist
The dense, claustrophobic atmosphere of Queensbridge is palpable in tracks like Shook Ones, Pt. II, where Havoc and Prodigy paint an immediate and confrontational document of their reality. This environment bred a unavoidable sense of dread and then inevitably the resilience and authenticity that permeates their music. There’s a darkly intense intelligence in Shook Ones though it doesn’t immediately register itself.
I'm only nineteen, but my mind is old
And when the things get for real, my warm heart turns cold
Another nigga deceased, another story gets told-Prodigy, Shook Ones, Pt. II
Self-aware men of that age are increasingly hard to find in this era. One can make the case it was Prodigy’s environment and partnership with Havoc that produced that lyric, but that’s an oversimplification and removes credit from Prodigy himself. He doesn’t bore us with wistful longing or nostalgia. No. This is all quite fresh in his mind. He is aware that he must disassociate and compartmentalize to keep himself sane. Havoc is equally afflicted. He occasionally drifts into philosophical and religious waters then immediately pulls himself back to his reality.
Sometimes I wonder, do I deserve to live?
Or am I gonna burn in Hell for all the things I did?
No time to dwell on that, 'cause my brain reacts-Havoc, Shook Ones, Pt. II
What’s more, through all the sounds we’ve absorbed and heard ring out, from the rise of Houston, ATL, and New Orleans, from trap and bounce, from the slickly polished and produced to the revenge of the grimy, backpack rap and mumble rhymes… all these years later, I still ache for them both. My heart never hurt for a hip-hop group before or since Shook Ones, Pt. II.
For 16 years, hip-hop’s Da Vinci Code went unsolved as thousands, literally thousands of crate diggers set to work trying to unlock the mystery. Of the three samples used on Shook Ones, Pt. II, two were sniffed out in relatively short order. That hook comes from Quincy Jones’ Kitty with the Bent Frame, and the drums come courtesy of the Daly-Wilson’s Big Band track Dirty Feet. That bassline though? That was a locked door turning away all would-be Ali Babas and associated thieves. Havoc produced Shook Ones, Pt. II and hip-hop’s producers subscribe to the magician’s code; ain’t no one saying shit. There are hordes of what producer extraordinaire Madlib calls “sample snitches,” that is, people who dedicate more time to decoding what producer sampled what song than the producers themselves dedicated to building the sample. Then, in March 2011, a user named Bronco on a website called the-breaks.com cracked the unbreakable vault. 16 years of sample sleuths were looking for basslines in obscure records when it was never a bassline at all.
Relentlessly creative jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock released Fat Albert Rotunda in 1969 for the TV special Hey, Hey, Hey, It's Fat Albert. The first track on Side B is Jessica, a bittersweet, plaintive piece with a keyboard intro that is eerily familiar. Havoc confirmed, reluctantly, that he sampled Hancock’s piano melody from the song, and slowed it down at two different pitches to create a two-bar loop. He produced the samples in his Queensbridge bedroom using an Akai MPC60 to sequence the drums and an Ensoniq EPS-16 Plus for the rest.
If you want to watch DJ Jazzy transition from Hancock to Mobb Deep while Questlove absolutely loses his damn mind, I got you:
Ethnomusicologist Joseph Schloss, author of Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop, suggests the sheer volume of sample information found online has cheapened the experience. “You can find both the information and the recording online, so you can satisfy that urge without buying the record or even working very hard,” says Schloss, adding, “ironically, it almost seems that what we miss in retrospect is the work itself, rather than the rewards.” It would appear Schloss is something of a purist. I’m not so Old School that I can’t now enjoy Shook Ones, Pt. II for all its darkly throbbing allure. I can watch Tarantino films over and again, but knowing what I know now about his films or hip-hop’s relationship with sampling has exposed me to even more material to enjoy, more creative works to devour. Indeed, going down this rabbit hole has introduced me to a few new Quincy Jones’ tracks I didn’t know I needed until just now. Shook Ones, Pt. II still giveth.