Prodigy
1974 — 2017 · Queens-born rapper; one half of the duo Mobb Deep; principal voice of mid-1990s East Coast hardcore hip-hop alongside the Notorious B.I.G. and Nas
Albert Johnson was born on the second of November 1974 at Hempstead, Long Island, the son of Fatima Frances Johnson — a Long Island public-school music teacher — and Budd Johnson Jr., a session jazz musician. His paternal grandfather was the saxophonist Budd Johnson and his maternal grandfather was the bandleader Bernard Joseph Johnson. The Johnson household was a Black middle-class musical family. He attended Andrew Jackson High School in Cambria Heights, Queens, from 1989 to 1991 and the High School of Art and Design at Manhattan from 1991 to 1992.
He formed in 1991 with the high-school friend Kejuan Muchita — subsequently known as Havoc — the duo Mobb Deep at Andrew Jackson High School. The duo signed with the small 4th and Broadway label in 1992 and released the album Juvenile Hell in April 1993. The album sold modestly and the duo was released from their contract by year's end.
They signed with Loud Records in 1994 on the strength of a demonstration mix-tape and released the album The Infamous in April 1995. The album sold over five hundred thousand copies in its first year and produced the singles Shook Ones (Part II), Survival of the Fittest and Give Up the Goods. The Shook Ones (Part II) single is widely identified by present consensus as one of the principal recordings of 1990s hip-hop and the foundational document of the Queensbridge dark-piano production aesthetic that Havoc developed for the duo.
The follow-up albums Hell on Earth (1996) and Murda Muzik (1999) consolidated the duo's standing as among the principal hardcore-hip-hop voices of the late 1990s.
Prodigy suffered from sickle-cell anemia from his early childhood and across his career was repeatedly hospitalised with sickle-cell complications.
He served three years from 2008 to 2011 at the Mid-State Correctional Facility in New York for criminal possession of a weapon.
He died of complications of sickle-cell anemia at Las Vegas on the twentieth of June 2017, at forty-two.
He is honored here as the principal voice of Mobb Deep and the Queensbridge hardcore aesthetic.
Curated with honor.
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