Mobb Deep
Hell On Earth

THE REVIEW

"It's the Infamous back in the house once again/ Livin' the life that of diamonds and guns/ and now gems pull gats like a basehead pull on stems/ the Mobb got the bomb run out and tell a friend/ Drop a gem on 'em..."

Rap without compromise. Stories that speak of real life, of shootings, of shady dealings on street corners. These are Mobb Deep, alias Prodigy and Havoc, two guys from Queens who, with the monumental The Infamous, decisively lay the foundations of street-rap. Their music is without frills, hard-hitting lyrics that speak of "real life" and classic and powerful beats with incisive sounds, nothing more, nothing less. In 1996, the two Infamous Niggaz return with their third album, Hell On Earth, released, like the previous The Infamous, for the faithful Loud Records. An evocative title, posing as thugs starting from the inside of the booklet, you understand what you're in for. Simply a stratospheric album that confirms, and perhaps even amplifies, the abilities shown with the epic previous work.

It starts with the melancholic loop of "Animal Instinct," strong with the rhymes of their Infamous Mobb mates, and we already delve into their world, a world where there are no rules and where the strongest rules the roost ("Survival of the fittest, only the strongs survive" as we are rightly reminded). The obsessive piano of "Drop a Gem On 'Em" immerses us definitively into that atmosphere of gloom and despair that will accompany us throughout the record, in the company of strange and dark characters like Johnny Blaze a.k.a. Method Man ("Extortion"), the trusty Big Noyd ("Man Down"), Lex Diamonds a.k.a. Chef Raekwon (his magnificent rhymes shine among the melancholic strings of "Nighttime Vultures"), the always superb Nas a.k.a. The Golden Child (a pinch of his street philosophy is found in "Give It Up Fast"). Up to the magnificent title track, where it really feels like wandering, late at night, through the streets of a desolate suburb, accompanied by the words of our guys: "it's hell on earth, whose next or gonna be first, the projects is front lines, and the enemy is one time, I ain't gotta tell you, it's right in front of your eyes...". Magnificent. The apocalyptic "Apostle's Warning" leaves us to our fate, and concludes a record of rare intensity that consecrates Mobb Deep among the legends of rap forever. Already from the subsequent Murda Muzik our guys would lose the polish of the early days, leading to the commercial drift of Infamy and the recent Amerikaz Nightmare. But we like to remember them this way, among jewels and briefcases with "suspicious" contents, ready to shout "We've just shooked ones...", as in their most famous track. Sure that, with albums like Hell On Earth, they would definitely have succeeded in shaking us.