August 9, 1999
Murda Muzik
In Queensbridge, NYC, when someone gets shot, they generally don't get up. Your homey isn't out drinking 40s and smoking blunts; he's laying on a slab with a tag on his toe...
8 / 10
In Queensbridge, NYC, when someone gets shot, they generally don't get up. Your homey isn't out drinking 40s and smoking blunts; he's laying on a slab with a tag on his toe. If Public Enemy are "Black CNN", then Mobb Deep are the bleakest investigative documentary.
'Murda Muzik' isn't quite as sublimely, suffocatingly doomy as its gothic, mordantly bestringed predecessor 'Hell On Earth' (a reference to their Queensbridge 'hood, which, on all their records, takes on a forbidding character of its own), though it certainly boasts a similar bodycount.
However, this time around, Prodigy and Havoc's razor rhyming is couched in more redemptive, soul-tinged beats, giving some breathing space from the otherwise suffocatingly grim atmosphere. Which is not to say 'Murda Muzik' is any easier a ride; their raps still reverberate with images of loss and hopelessness, drawing from their own personal experiences and tragedies to inform the tracks' grim and grimy vignettes. These ain't the Lexus-driving, Cristal-supping fantasies peddled by much gangsta rap; sadness and pathos shadow the album. Opener 'Streets Raised Me' is Stevie Wonder's 'Village Ghetto Land' with a gat in its mouth, a scornful depiction of a desolated, wilfully ignored landscape.
'Murda Muzik' certainly ain't an easy listen. It's more radical, more challenging, than much of the so-called avant-garde music scene. And it will hijack the Billboard Top Ten well into the next millennium.
To read all our reviews first - days before they appear online - check out NME magazine, on sale every Wednesday
For the latest music videos and backstage interviews, check out our sister site, NME Video.
Comments do not always reflect the views of NME, or IPC Media, for guidelines visit our Ts & Cs page