extracts from Prodigy's outcoming book, talking about Capone from CNN snitching on Havoc's brother Killa Black, Prodigy kicking it with Mary J, The Mobb's beatdown on Noreaga.
Seems hella interesting. Im gonna cop this.
The Time Havoc (Mistakenly) Shot An A&R At Def Jam
Hav, DJ Prince A.D. from Queensbridge, and I were scheduled to meet Russell Simmons at his Manhattan condo around the block from Def Jam. I always kept my gun on me, but I didn’t want to disrespect Russell by bringing that type of energy into his home, so this kid Perry at Def Jam let me leave it in his office drawer until we were done.
Perry walked us to Russell’s apartment on Broadway near NYU. Russell’s a**istant let us in. There was a big-a** Jacuzzi tub in the floor in the room next to the living room. The white carpet had just been shampooed and we had to take our shoes off and step on the soapy stinking carpet in wet socks. Oh, so this is what it’s like to have a million dollars and your own record label. Nervous and excited, we waited around for fifteen minutes until the a**istant said Russell wasn’t going to be able to make it. He sent us back to the office to meet with Lyor Cohen instead.
Lyor listened to our best songs and told us that we cursed too much and our music was too violent. He said Def Jam couldn’t do anything with us because we were too young to speak like that. They would get in trouble with the law for putting our album out.
What?! We couldn’t believe it. We were pissed off but we weren’t that mad because we knew we had some hot ****. If they didn’t sign us it was their loss, not ours. Although a month later, they signed this group Onyx from Jamaica, Queens. These *****s were screaming, cussing, and waving TEC-9s in their videos, looking like black skinheads!
As we were leaving Def Jam, I went to get my gun from Perry’s office. We walked in behind him and Perry pa**ed it to Hav instead of me. I asked him for some De La Soul and Slick Rick posters I’d seen lying around, and he went to get them. Hav pointed the gun at me, playing around. “Don’t play with me like that,” I told him.
When Perry came back with the posters, Hav pointed the gun at him. “*****, give me them posters,” Hav said, joking. The gun went off, hitting Perry in the stomach, his shirt catching fire where the bullet hit as he fell onto me. Hav dropped the gun and ran out of the building with Prince A.D. right behind him. Yo, this ***** just shot this mutha****er! I looked down at Perry as he tried to grab on to my shoulder. “Yo, get off me!” I yanked my arm away from him. I’m going with my people. I ran downstairs to catch up with Hav and A.D.
The most popular duo in rap, Run-D.M.C, was walking into the building as Hav, Prince A.D., and I came running out. My boys knocked them to the ground as they busted out of the front door and ran up Houston toward Broadway to the train station. I wasn’t far behind.
“Stop those kids!” somebody screamed behind us. When I looked back, it was Ali Shaheed Muhammad, the DJ from A Tribe Called Quest. Hav stopped running and started screaming at me. “I didn’t mean it, son! I didn’t mean to shoot him! You gotta hide me, son, take me to Florida!” I saw some detectives riding past us in an unmarked car and told Hav to be quiet. The three D’s got out of the car and came over to us.
“Is there a problem?” one officer asked. Hav started screaming again. “I didn’t mean to shoot him, it was an accident!” The D pulled out cuffs and put them on Havoc. Ali Shaheed Muhammad caught up with us and told the cops what happened. I told them it was an accident, we thought it was a lighter, we found it outside, we didn’t know it was a real gun. They took Hav to the bookings. Prince A.D. and I went home.
The next morning when Moms woke me up for school, she had the radio on Kiss FM as usual. While we were both getting dressed, they announced that some rappers got into an argument with Lyor Cohen at Def Jam over contracts and one of the rappers, Kejuan Muchita, shot an A&R because they didn’t sign us. What?!
The Time Nore Caught A Beatdown
One night that winter, Hav and I were on the block with Karate Joe, Gotti, Nitty, Trip, this kid we called Bill Cosby, and this other kid Johnny. Havoc started flipping out, saying he heard Tragedy was ****ing with his lady Shawna on the low and he wanted to step to Tragedy about it. We all walked over to Capone’s building next door where Tragedy, Capone, and N.O.R.E. hung out. Hav knocked on Capone’s door and asked him to tell Tragedy to come outside. Tragedy came out with N.O.R.E. and Capone.
“What’s up, man, you ****ing with Shawna?” Hav asked. Tragedy said it wasn’t true but Hav wasn’t trying to hear it.
“I know you ****ing with Shawna, stop lying!” Hav punched Tragedy in the face and knocked him down. While he was getting back up, Karate Joe warned Tragedy, “You better not hit him back!” Hav punched Tragedy and knocked him down again while we surrounded them, watching. N.O.R.E. was getting nervous seeing the ***** who he thought had strength in QB getting his a** beat—he was worried he was gonna be next. So he reached for his gun, pulled it out, and shot one bullet at the ground in between all of us. The bullet bounced off the cement and hit my man Johnny in the shinbone. N.O.R.E. ran for his life out of the projects. Tragedy and Capone ran into the building and someone drove Johnny to the hospital right away. The next day, Johnny came through the block on crutches with a cast on his leg. N.O.R.E. could never show his face in Queensbridge again.
About a month pa**ed and some unknowing fool set up a show for Mobb Deep and Capone-N-Noreaga at a little club called Krystals on Merrick Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens, across the street from the bus terminal and up the block from my grandmother’s dance school. The only reason we went was so we could catch N.O.R.E. and torture him for what he did to Johnny.
The whole crew pulled up and parked our trucks in the bus terminal facing the club to get a good look at everybody out front. Tragedy and Capone were standing at the front door facing us. Nitty spotted N.O.R.E. walking over to them. “Anyone got a razor?” Nitty asked Twin and me, but we didn’t. Nitty, Twin, and Money No approached N.O.R.E. “Come over here so we can talk,” Nitty told him, putting his arm around N.O.R.E.’s neck and walking him into the street. After a few steps, Nitty started punching N.O.R.E. in the face while he had him in a headlock. N.O.R.E. dropped to the ground and the crew jumped him. Gotti, Havoc, and I stood by the trucks and watched them beat the clothes off that boy. Man, I never saw somebody get jumped so bad!
They were like dogs fighting over a piece of meat. Karate Joe grabbed N.O.R.E. by what was left of his shirt and dragged him to the corner so he could have him all to himself. He focused strictly on his rib cage, destroying N.O.R.E.’s ribs with punch after punch. Nitty snatched N.O.R.E.’s Jesus piece from the ground and we hopped back in our trucks. While N.O.R.E. was getting jumped, his boys Tragedy and Capone didn’t move. They just stood in front of the club watching the whole thing.
Some of N.O.R.E.’s people carried him to a parking lot around the corner. I already knew what was going to happen next. “You know they’re about to come back from the parking lot with guns,” I told Twin Gambino. We sat and waited. I popped the hood and told Twin Gambino to get my gun out. I’d just bought an automatic .22 with a twelve-shot clip, but like an a**hole I’d never tested it out. After a few minutes, just as I predicted, a few of N.O.R.E.’s people came dragging him from the parking lot with a TEC-9. I was sitting in the driver’s seat; Gambino was outside, standing at my door. We had the drop on them, meaning we could move on them before they saw it coming. “Start shooting,” I told Twin calmly, but the gun didn’t fire. The piece of **** was broken! N.O.R.E.’s people started unloading their gun on us. As their bullets started to explode, Gambino got frustrated with my broken gun and threw it at them. Ha! “Shoot him!” N.O.R.E. pointed at Nitty, who was in between my truck and Havoc’s truck. “Right there!” Whoever had the gun shot Nitty in his back as he was trying to jump into my back seat. Plus the shooter dumped the entire forty-two-shot clip at us and not one of the shots hit our two trucks. I was shocked. The only target they hit was the person they were after.
The Time Capone (Allegedly) Snitched On Havoc’s Brother, Killer Black
Havoc thought he found out who was snitching on his brother Killer. At the trial at Queens Criminal Court, the whole crew sat in the middle of the courtroom waiting to see who the DA’s star witness was going to be. We couldn’t believe it when he came walking up to the stand. It was Capone! Was Capone the ****ing snitch?
Capone got up there and said he saw Killer pull the trigger and shoot the man in the back of the head. He pointed at Killer. “I saw him do it,” he said. “He shot the man.” He was on the stand snitching like it was cool! Later I heard he was trying to lower a sentence for a case he’d caught for a direct sale to an undercover. Wow.
The false testimony Capone gave wound up backfiring. The autopsy report said that the man was shot in the front of the head, not the back. Killer beat the case. After that, Capone tried telling people that he did that on purpose to help Killer beat the case. What!?!? I don’t know for sure— Maybe he did know what he was doing, maybe his testimony did help. But from then on, instead of Capone and Noreaga, the whole hood called them Canary and Nore Faker.
While Killer was locked up, he became a full-fledged Muslim. When he came home, it took awhile to get used to. This wild-a** ***** is a peace-loving Muslim now? I liked the new Killer, though; we’d have deep conversations about life. I started reading books by Dr. York, a spiritual leader from Bushwick, Brooklyn, who taught about the origin of all races and religions. If you listen to the Hell on Earth album, you can hear how my rhymes started changing at that time. I started rapping about the Illuminati, secret societies, and the corrupt government and becoming more conscious of my surroundings, going through a mental and spiritual change just like Killer. That seed that my moms planted in my head with Malcolm X’s autobio was starting to grow…
The Time Prodigy Almost Hooked Up With Mary J. Blige
Havoc and I got a call that month from Charlene Thomas, who worked in the product-management department at Loud Records. Mary J. Blige had contacted Charlene requesting that Mobb Deep be featured on one of her new songs, “Deep Inside.” At the recording session in Manhattan, Mary was sitting in a lounge chair with her legs hanging over the armrest, lighting a slender cigar, wearing big sungla**es. She looked good, like a female pimp. She hopped out of the chair and greeted us with hugs and kisses. The beat sounded hot, so I grabbed a seat, a pen and pad, and Mary told the engineer to play the song so we could hear her lyrics. I finished my verse in about twenty minutes. Havoc laid his next and we were done real fast.
A month or two later, Charlene from Loud called again. “What’s up, today is Mary J.’s birthday and she wants to take you guys out to dinner with her,” Charlene said. “Just you and Havoc. She’s sending a car to pick you up around six p.m., okay?” Hell yeah it was okay! I got fresh, met up with Hav, and we hopped in the S500 Benz that she sent. We stopped to buy Mary birthday flowers before the car dropped us off in front of an exclusive Chinese restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. We figured it would be a dinner party with a bunch of her friends and family, but when we walked inside the spot, we saw Mary and one of her girlfriends seated at a table for four.
We gave Mary her flowers, said happy birthday, and sat down.
“Where’s everybody at?” I asked.
“It’s just us,” Mary said. “I wanted to take ya’ll out to eat and thank you guys for working with me. You know Mobb Deep is my favorite rap group.” Havoc sat next to Mary’s friend, a good-looking light-skinned female, and I sat next to Mary. Mary asked me what kind of drinks I liked. I told her I was drinking whatever she was drinking. “You ever had a cosmo?” she asked.
“A what?”
“A cosmo,” she repeated. “It’s more of a ladies’ drink, but it’s good. Try one with me.”
“A’ight, cool,” I said. Mary ordered a round of cosmos, pink and chilled in large martini gla**es. Mary ordered another round. The first one gave me a crazy buzz because I hadn’t been drinking, but how could I refuse drinks with Mary J. Blige on her birthday? I ain’t drinking no more after tonight, I promised myself. This is a special occasion. The next round of cosmos came out with our main course. Mary was feeling the drinks and started getting comfortable, asking me questions.
“How old are you, P?”
“Twenty-four.”
“What’s your sign?”
“Scorpio. November second.”
“You got a lady?” she asked. “You married?” Mary was flirting and giving me all kinds of signs, but I didn’t realize it until I looked in her eyes and saw she was dead serious. I got real shy and nervous, stuck like a deer in headlights. Man, this was Mary J. Blige! My mouth wanted to say no, but my brain forced my mouth to give an honest answer.
“Yeah,” I said.
“How long have you been together?” she asked.
“For about five years now.”
“That’s good, that’s what I’m looking for in my life,” Mary said. “I need somebody to be serious with.” Mary was cool as hell, beautiful, and very down-to-earth. I felt like a fool for not pursuing her but I was really in love with my woman. Havoc hooked up with Mary’s girlfriend that night and I went home to KiKi.
