Yesterday the hip-hop world lost an artist who was short in physical stature but loomed large over the history of New York rap. Prodigy of the renowned duo Mobb Deep died at the age of 42.

Prodigy and producer/rapper partner Havoc joined forces in their teens and had a 23 year run as Mobb Deep that included three gold plaques, one platinum, and a string of singles indelibly embedded into the classic rap canon. Both members had significant solo releases as well, although their chemistry cemented them as an elite rap duo.

Prodigy was one of rap’s most potent lead off batters. He wrote like a fighter focused on knocking out his opponent with his first blow. Prodigy‘s body of work is a hall of fame of quotables delivered in his menacing deadpan.

“I’m only 19 but my mind is old, and when the things get for real my warm heart turns cold.”
“I put my lifetime in between the paper’s lines.”
“I break bread, ribs, $100 bills…”

And of course the line that starts Prodigy’s first verse on “Survival of the Fittest” from the group’s 1995 standard bearing album The Infamous is one of the most chilling.

“There’s a war going on outside, no man is safe from.”

Mobb Deep‘s work helped swing the pendulum back to New York as a gravitational center of the hip-hop world as the West Coast established its dominance with gangster rap in the early ’90s. Mobb Deep‘s sound and subject matter was definitely hardcore, but with an aesthetic shaped by the New York environment, particularly the duo’s home turf of Queensbridge. The sparse, ominous soundscapes reflected the environment of volatile summers and harsh winters in dense tenement blocks where the violent drug trade required a survival of the fittest ethos. Havoc and Prodigy‘s lyrics were at times weapons within, documentation of, and even pensive reflections about their world.