“It was a combo of things”: The reason why Tupac Shakur dissed Mobb Deep on ‘Hit Em Up’
‘Hit Em Up’ is one of the most iconic hip-hop records of all time. The Tupac Shakur song was used to target various East Coast rappers, such as Biggie Smalls and other Bad Boy artists like the founder, Diddy. While the track is mostly aimed at The Notorious BIG, Pac also took the opportunity to diss another prominent New York act: Mobb Deep.
In the outro, Tupac takes a moment to call out Prodigy and Havoc, mocking P for having sickle cell disease and warning him about his health issues. ‘Hit Em Up‘ was released in 1996, and Prodigy ended up losing his life due to complications from his long-term health problem in 2017.
Pac raps in the song, “Oh yeah, Mobb Deep, huh, you wanna fuck with us?/ You lil’ young-ass motherfuckers/ Don’t one of you n*ggas got sickle-cell or somethin’?/ You’re fuckin’ with me, n*gga, you fuck around and have a seizure or a heart attack/ You better back the fuck up ‘fore you get smacked the fuck up.”
Over the years, there have been many theories about why Tupac took shots at the duo. During an appearance on Drink Champs, Havoc shared his side of the story, going into detail about why they felt the force of the hip-hop legend in the ’90s.
“I believe it was a combo of things,” he said. “On ‘Survival of the Fittest’, we [rapped], ‘Thug life, we still livin’ it.’ At the time, [Tupac] had an article in Vibe magazine when he was like, ‘I don’t want to do this thug shit anymore.’ So he probably thought we were like, ‘Thug life, we still living it, fuck what he’s doin’.’ It piled up on ‘LA, LA’ and it was like, fuck these n*ggas.”
‘LA, LA’ was Capone-N-Noreaga’s response to Tha Dogg Pound’s ‘New York, New York’, with Mobb Deep featuring on the record. The pair formally responded to Pac on the song ‘Drop a Gem on ‘Em’, which appeared on 1996’s Hell on Earth album.
On the track, Havoc raps, “You yell my name, that’s only givin’ me props/ Plus the fans that you got wonderin’ what’s got you hot/ It’s Tu-Not, knocked out the box and got rocked/ Got raped on the Island, you officially got.”
Despite their issues, Mobb Deep still had respect for Tupac as a person. When Pac died following a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in 1996, the duo told radio stations to stop playing their diss track as they didn’t feel comfortable hearing themselves bad-mouthing him when people were in mourning.
“We had actually pulled the song because it was the first single off of Hell on Earth,” Prodigy said. “We submitted it to radio and radio put it in rotation, even in Cali. But when Pac died, we pulled the song off radio and told them to stop playing it out of respect for his family and out of respect for the dead. We were like, ‘Nah, stop pushing that.’ We still put it on the album.”