Mobb Deep ‎– The Infamous

When was this reissue released?

Of all the gritty SP-1200 laden early 90s NYC hiphop masterpiece albums (you know them, anything RZA touched, Nas, etc.) no production feels as fresh in my mind as The Infamous. I mean this album is unbelievably dark and dirty. Every sample seems buried under layers and layers of record hiss, rain and fog. It's so hardboiled, urban, deep and atmospheric, that I would doubt that modern dubstep producers like Burial and Vex'd aren't huge fans. Havoc & Prodigy's rhymes have a deadpan, stone cold but wavering delivery that carries the the straightforward beats along, but they never get old or samey. Being a sound art junky the moments that hit me the most on this album are the more noisy/ sound effect-like, in specific the sample of a humming streetlamp (yeah!) in "Party's Over." A kind of ambient sense not seen in many other (true, street, and un-pretentious) hiphop productions. The best part is that it feels (of course) real and not inserted for the sake of the experimentation of some bloody college students.