Mobb Deep

Prodigy: “We were just in the studio all night, bugging out. I just wrote some shit real quick to get it off my chest. I felt like at that time we had put out Juvenile Hell, and it didn’t really do that good because we didn’t try hard with the production and the lyrics. We were just young kids wanting some money and a video on TV. So we got the result of doing that by not selling no records, and people not feeling the album. “When we were making The Infamous, I made that skit because I just wanted to let people know how we’re living and what type of people we are. People didn’t really know, so we were letting people know this time around like, ‘Dog, this is what it is. This is how we get down. Fuck all that other shit.’ “[Keith Murray thought] it was about him. [Laughs.] I don’t know how you figure I was talking about you. That shit is just crazy to me. There was a few people that was talking [about space shit] back then. I guess if the shoe fits, you wear it, so I guess I am talking about you. “But what was on my mind was just letting niggas know this was the difference between us and the other rap shit that was out there. This is our style of shit, and that other style is nothing compared to what we do. Look now at all the other shit that was out back then, and look at Mobb Deep. That’s what I was trying to show people.” Havoc: “We used to book studio time and sometimes we’d come in at different times. That was one of those days when P was there [by himself] and he was in one of his creative modes and he felt like venting. He did it and it turned out to be a classic prelude. [Laughs.] When you’re in the creative space, it’s like endless possibilities of what you could do. It’s like, who the fuck does that? Who is making an album where they do a fucking prelude where they’re just talking for like two, three minutes? It’s crazy.” Matty C a.k.a. Matt Life (Executive Producer and A&R for Loud Records): “I remember being like, ‘Yeah, we’ll do the skits at the end.’ They weren’t just happening in the mix. They sound like they were when you listen to a record, but that definitely was kind of an afterthought in the process. That’s true of both ‘The Infamous Prelude’ and ‘Just Step Prelude.’ I remember both of those things happening in the end at the same session when we were putting the whole thing together: Sequencing, mastering, adding those last few skits in there. They both kind of strike me as moments similar to each other like that. When he had those last eureka moments