Credit: Royce Da 5′9″

Growing up, Royce Da 5’9” developed a life-long love for Mobb Deep and, especially, for Prodigy. Even when Prodigy concentrated on his solo work, Royce remained a dedicated fan, and he came to respect one of P’s tracks as one of hip-hop’s greatest of all time.

In a conversation with Revolt in 2017, published shortly after Prodigy had died, Royce reflected on his idol, recalling how he had inspired him to get into rapping in the first place. “I had to be in middle school, early high school when I first started listening to Mobb Deep,” he recalled. “It was listening to them that I made the transition just from listener to actually wanting to write my own raps. P falls into a category with artists who influenced me to actually want to rap.”

Royce admired Prodigy’s ability to produce intricate, clever rhymes without alienating more casual listeners by making it too difficult for them to understand. He kept things simple yet deep, and he had a way of imbuing emotion into his words without going over the top.

“Even when he was angry on a record,” Royce noted, “he had this way of bringing out an emotion and sounding calm at the same time. Like that cool ass uncle that you had, or when your dad gets mad at you but your dad’s a gangsta. He gets mad at you around company, and just says, ‘Sit yo ass down.’ That’s more terrifying to you than if he would have yelled at you.”

From Royce’s perspective, Mobb Deep introduced an urgent, dark feeling into hip-hop, “They showed you that not everything was all happy happy all the time”, but he remained a fan even when the duo started to experiment with their own projects. He especially loved Prodigy’s solo work, with one track in particular from his debut album, 2000’s HNIC, standing out. 

“I think ‘Keep It Thoro’ is probably one of the best songs ever done in hip-hop,” Royce said of the track, which was produced by The Alchemist. “That Prodigy and Alchemist team-up collaboration is gold to me. I would put ‘Keep It Thoro’ in my top ten songs ever in hip-hop, without even thinking about it.”

Again, Prodigy’s distinct ability to keep his rapping simple stood out to Royce on ‘Keep It Thoro.’ “He didn’t get on there and over-rap it, he didn’t try to do no faddish flows, he didn’t say no trendy shit,” Royce said. “He just kicked it to you timelessly, so any era you try to listen to it, it’ll sound brand new. And Al just made the perfect beat.”

Royce thinks that The Alchemist’s beat and Prodigy’s voice matched each other perfectly. “It’s almost like the vocal tone he chose to use was in key with the beat, like if he just raised his voice a little bit that it would take it out of the pocket,” he said. “His vocal tone is an instrument in the key of the beat, and he never goes out of key. Like a real n—a autotune on his voice or something, it’s just perfect.”

What’s interesting about Prodigy’s vocal tone on that track is that, according to The Alchemist, he landed on it almost by accident. As Al explained to Complex in 2012, Prodigy achieved that particular tone because he was ill on the day of recording. “When we did the vocals, P kinda had a cold,” he admitted. “He was under the weather, you can hear it in his delivery, he was a little more nasal than usual.”

It goes to show that not everything can be planned perfectly. Sometimes luck and circumstance intervene to create great works of art, and, from Royce’s point of view, ‘Keep It Thoro’ is precisely that. “Everything landed at the right place and right time with that song,” he said.