Mobb Deep’s second studio album, The Infamous, defined the New York hardcore hip-hop sound with tracks like “Shook Ones, Pt. II” and “Survival of the Fittest” solidifying its influence for decades to come. Being almost entirely produced by group member Havoc, the album became the soundtrack for the streets with its dark soundscapes and menacing beats: We had to look deep inside our soul and create some shit that stood the test of time. We had to shake the world up—that made us try harder than ever before. Not only that, we didn’t have the money to afford the producers that we wanted. The dope producers. Nas had dope production. RZA was killing ‘em. Puff and Biggie were coming up with ill productions. It was like, yo, since we couldn’t afford these ill producers, we have to come up with our own beats. We had to be like, what can we make different about our lyrics and songs that was different than before. As natives of Queensbridge, Prodigy and Havoc were able to paint a bleak picture of the street life with their gritty narratives and evocative melodies about crime and poverty on the dark side of New York’s urban landscape. The album marked Mobb Deep’s transition from a relatively unknown rap duo to becoming influential and commercially successful east coast icons after failing to create any buzz and being dropped from their label with their first album, Juvenile Hell: It was kind of embarrassing for us. We thought we knew what we were doing. We’d made an album. Bought our gold chains and gold teeth. We got on TV. We was like, ‘We doing it.’ But then we got a reality check and got dropped. So we went back and just listened to the music that was coming out. Nas, Main Source, Biggie. Niggas that was making dope hip-hop. We was embarrassed that our first effort at hip-hop didn’t stand up to what was out there. It was like, are we going to be this wack-ass group who no one remembers? Who made an album that didn’t go nowhere? Meanwhile, all these other dudes are being successful and making incredible hip-hop. We needed to get our shit together. The Gold-selling album peaked at #18 on the Billboard 200 and #3 on the R&B/hip-hop album charts in 1995. Prodigy shared his point of view on why The Infamous is a timeless classic: It’s because we base our music on reality. We call it reality rap. When they were trying to label us gangsta rap, we created our own label. This is reality rap. This shit is really happening. This shit is what we really go through. I guess that’s a major factor just because it’s just so real. It touches home for people and they can relate to it. At that time, there was nothing out there like what we were doing. There was nothing like Nas, Mobb Deep, or Wu-Tang. We created that genre of music. That whole era is immortalized because of what we created.