The Infamous is released

Why it matters

The Infamous came out April 25, 1995, on Loud. Mobb Deep at this point was Havoc and Prodigy, two MCs from the Queensbridge Houses (the same projects Nas had grown up in). They had put out a thin debut in 1993 called Juvenile Hell that had not landed. They had been on the verge of getting dropped. They had remade themselves. What The Infamous does is establish the dirty, dark, paranoid, drum-forward New York rap sound that would dominate the East Coast for the rest of the 1990s. Havoc produced almost all the beats, drawing from Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock, and obscure jazz records, building cold loops over sharp drums. Prodigy raps in a deadpan low register that became one of the most-imitated voices of the era. "Shook Ones, Pt. II," "Survival of the Fittest," "Eye for an Eye" (with Nas and Raekwon), "Temperature's Rising." The album is dense, brutal, beautiful. You can put it on at any volume and it lowers the temperature in the room by ten degrees. That is the production. That is the point.