The moment Prodigy and Havoc met and Mobb Deep began: “A little Slick Rick”
When Albert Johnson and Kejuan Waliek Muchita met at a New York high school, who could have predicted that their new friendship would literally shape an entire style of music in the decades to come? Better known as Prodigy and Havoc, the duo would first join forces in 1990 as Poetical Prophets, before eventually switching to their now legendary name: Mobb Deep. Their sound would forever shape hip-hop.
In 2013, four years before Prodigy’s untimely death, both he and Havoc appeared on the Red Bull Radio Fireside Chat to reflect on their origins and career success. They each spoke of their hip-hop influences as kids, with Prodigy singling out Run-DMC’s ‘Sucker MC’s’ and LL Cool J’s ‘Rock the Bells’ as highlights, while also mentioning the rapper Schoolly D. Havoc, meanwhile, spoke in broader terms.
“Definitely what sparked my interest in hip-hop was just growing up around it,” he said. “That’s all they played around my way, Queensbridge Projects. We had Marley Marl living out there, Roxanne Shante, and seeing all those big superstars in one place with their fancy cars and all of that… That definitely sparked my interest, being from a place where hip-hop was really prevalent.”
As for becoming a performer in general, Prodigy’s family background was especially important to him. “My grandmother had a big dance school called Bernice Johnson Dance School,” he explained. “My grandfather was a jazz musician, Budd Johnson, so I grew up going to my grandfather’s shows. My mom used to tell me stories about the group that she was in. That was an amazing influence on my life when it came to doing music. I wanted to be like Michael Jackson. I used to look up to Michael Jackson when I was a kid, and then I got into the rap thing and it was over.”
Both Prodigy and Havoc bore their own unique influences throughout their careers, but, without each other, they never would have individually reached the heights that they did as a duo. So meeting each other was a solid bit of good luck.
“We was like a year in grade apart from each other,” Havoc explained. I would see Prodigy around, but I didn’t know him, and he used to wear all this big jewellery like nothing short of a little Slick Rick, I kid you not. You could hear him coming down the hallway. I always used to be like, “Who the hell is that?” Word, it was crazy, just crazy. We had mutual friends, and we all became friends and then it just so happened he had the same interest that I had. It was rapping.”
Their burgeoning friendship wasn’t entirely smooth, though, as Prodigy pointed out. “My first impression of Hav was, ‘Oh, son is wild.’ When I first met him he was in a fight outside of school. I was coming out of school, my man Black was supposed to introduce me to him. We were in photography class together. He was like ‘Yo, there’s another kid you’ve got to meet. He dope, he rap too. You should start a group, yo.’ We went outside to meet and it was like a big fight outside the school so I go to look and Black like, ‘Oh, that’s Hav right there fighting!’ Crazy situation, crazy situation.”
For what it’s worth, Havoc claims to have won that particular brawl. “Who won the fight? I won the fight!” he claimed. “It was one punch. First I missed and then I caught him again, boom. He was way bigger than me, but he was probably intimidated by all the people I was with. I’m pretty sure one-on-one he probably would’ve kicked my ass, but I won.”