As the Queensbridge Project killer on a solo mission to stake out new territories, Mobb Deep's Prodigy drops scorching speech napalm on urban wastelands. "Genesis" is an exploration of environmental race warfare, both internecine and governmental in origin. The horn blasts on "Rock Dat Sh*t" make like the "Theme to Rocky" and find Prodigy on a street to search for an adrenaline boost of reality and "a cutie who likes to drink semen". The self-produced "Can't Complain" turns Barry White's "Rhapsody In White" into a multi-tracked theme for a ghetto Liberace, while "Infamous Minded" is a shattered mirror of stuttering drum patterns and kettledrum slave beat. Prodigy's partner in grime, Havoc, guests and produces on "Wanna Be Thugs", a mass of distorted beats and tensile strings that the Mobb-sters use to show off a necklace of skulls scalped from plastic gangsters. The title track sounds like the upbeat theme to a lost 1970s detective movie that opens with a sweeping helicopter shot of blood-soaked tenements. Prodigy runs through a "One Upon A Time In Queensbridge" tour of the environment that shaped him (and, long before the Mobb's time, Marley Marl and most of the Juice Crew). Overall, the production (by Rockwilder and a host of unknowns including The Alchemist, Bink Dogg and Ric Rude) adds a more user-friendly funk to the edgy King Of New York, cocaine-paranoia feel to Mobb Deep's music. And throughout, Prodigy proves that even without his other half, he's a force to be reckoned with. --Chris Campion
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