On a musical level, sickle cell made him bulletproof. That attitude is evident in his often threatening lyrics, which could be super calculated-the most infamous being the Mike Tyson-esque line: “Rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone”-or just casually tossed off, like the out-of-nowhere moment on “Keep It Thoro” from his first solo album, H.N.I.C., when he raps, “I throw a TV at you crazy.”
I believe the disease I was born with, sickle-cell anemia, made me that way,” he wrote in the preface to his 2011 autobiography, My Infamous Life. Along with rhyme partner Havoc, Mobb Deep posed with sickles on the cover of their debut 1993 LP, Juvenile Hell, and in the video for “Peer Pressure,” in what could be interpreted as a symbolic and creative nod to P’s ailment. Prodigy drew inspiration from his illness. The Mobb Deep motto-“Survival of the fit, only the strong survive”-should be one all MCs aspire to.
New york boy music prodigy professional#
He’d break down words and opponents in a cold blooded manner not unlike a professional assassin. Blessed with one of the sharpest minds in rap music, or “blood sport” as he preferred to call it, the man born Albert Johnson wrote concise, compact stanzas and delivered them with menacing intent. It’s the same tenacity that he brought to his pen game. That’s the kind of man he was-for him, obstacles were meant to be obliterated. If it turns out that he passed away due to complications from the painful disease, the right way to look at it is that Prodigy conquered a debilitating sickness for over four decades and did it on his own terms. The exact details of his death weren’t available at press time, but the respected 42-year-old rapper had been hospitalized in Las Vegas after suffering a crisis related to sickle cell anemia, which had afflicted him since birth.
0 kommentar(er)
