S. Samuel
Mobb Deep's Prodigy has opened up on his past beef with late music mogul 2Pac and said their tensions rose to lethal extremes during the East Coast/West Coast feud.
According to Capital P, he believes their problems sprung after a line on their 1995 hit, “Survival of the Fittest.”
“He had his Thug Life sh*t going on,” Prodigy said in an interview, “When we made our Infamous album, we had a song called ‘Survival of the Fittest,’ and on that song, in the beginning, one of my mans that just came home from jail doing a 15 years [bid], his name is Ferg. That’s Havoc’s cousin, actually. Ferg is on that album and in the beginning of the song, he says, ‘The Thug Life, we still living it.’ … 2Pac, you know, is the one most known for saying that. I think that pissed 2Pac off a little bit. He took that as disrespect, like, ‘Oh, these n*ggas trying to say Thug Life da-da-da-da-da. That’s our sh*t.’ He didn’t really come out and say nothing about it though until Snoop [Dogg] and Dogg Pound made a song, [‘New York, New York’] we did the [‘LA, LA’] sh*t. So when they made that, we were looking at it like, ‘What? These n*ggas are kicking over our buildings in the video, stomping through the city.’ It was real disrespectful sh*t.” (This Is 50)
The Mobb Deep member also revealed how much he wanted to take out Pac.
“They knew that was disrespectful. So we went back at them n*ggas. And we made our version, ‘LA, LA.’ … This is when 2Pac first signed to Death Row so I guess when he seen that, he was like, ‘Aight, I’m going at these n*ggas. Hard body. He went at us.’ So that’s what that was about. [Any ill feelings?] Oh yeah, I wanted to kill that n*gga. Yeah, h*ll yeah. I wanted to f*ck that n*gga up, jump him, cut hm, shoot him, all that sh*t. It was beef. They were sh*tting on n*ggas and we were sh*tting on them and it was going to be a problem if we ever each other. I might have got killed, I might have got beat up, either way it was going to go down. … Thankfully it never went down but it’s bad that he had to die through all that petty beef bullsh*t. It was corny.” (This Is 50)
Last month, fellow Queens, New York rap veteran Nas reflected on Pac taking issues over him using the same “Against All Odds” beat as his “Street Dreams.”
“See, I was always into ‘Pac early before his controversial side blew up all over America and the world. I was already into his music,” Nas said in an interview. “I saw him as a kindred spirit, I saw him as a brother, so it was like beefin’ with your brother. Not even beefin’, it felt like, your brother over there’s a little mad. This is an issue right now, so you gotta deal with it.” (XXL Mag)
In 2009, an unreleased Pac record called “War Gamez” dropped going at multiple NY artists including Mobb Deep and Jay-Z.
“N*ggas playing deadly motherf*cking war games,” Pac says in the intro. “How many broke down rappers got some sh*t to say…I bust on Bad Boy, Mobb Deep and murder The Firm/When you scream ‘fake thugs’ who the f*ck you mean/Get more C.R.E.A.M. than all of y’all/N*gga f*ck your team/Now Dre wanna switch sides/Tricks hide in war/Last year I shed tears but I don’t cry no more/Plus Jay-Z tried to play me/He won’t last long/Go ask King Sun how it feel to have your a** gone…Got shot five times, got outta jail on bail and sold five million. Sold more records than all you trick motherf*ckers put together. More than The Firm, more than Bad Boy, murdered Mobb Deep, more than all you b*tch made n*ggas.” (“War Gamez”)
Check out Prodigy’s interview below:
