My Gut Reaction: Mobb Deep - Survival of the Fittest EP (May 27, 2015)

This week I’m running a series of posts in honor of the late Albert Johnson, better known in the hip hop community as the rapper Prodigy. These reviews will close out both his and his group Mobb Deep’s respective catalogs, so as we’re close to the end of the week here, you’ve likely figured out what the final write-up will be for, and as it’s something you two have asked for many times over the past few years, hopefully you’ll come back for that one, too. Enjoy, leave your comments below, and we’ll see you tomorrow!

Survival of the Fittest is an EP release from Mobb Deep that I know almost nothing about. It dropped out of nowhere in 2015, the only fanfare leading up to it being a remix of a song from The Infamous (from which the EP gets its name) that seemed to have been recorded for dubious reasons, something I’ll touch on in a bit. It’s the second official EP release from the duo of Havoc and Prodigy, and unfortunately, it was also the final release from Mobb Deep before Prodigy’s passing, although both halves continued to release solo efforts in the two years that ensued.

Consisting of six tracks, one of which was previously released multiple times and none of which are the actual song that inspired the EP’s title, Survival of the Fittest was set as a digital release: although you could click on one of the Amazon links strewn throughout today’s post and purchase a physical copy, it ends up being a CD-R burned to order, which I suppose saves money overall, but the concept of burning a disc on demand makes me miss when compact discs were sold not only in local record shops but in big box stores like your Best Buys and Circuit Cities, entire sections overflowing with selections taken from artists across many genres, where one could spend every Tuesday (or, today, every Friday, I guess) poring over the new arrivals, not just in music but also in DVDs or Blu-Rays.

I feel like I’m getting off topic.

Survival of the Fittest feels to me like a quickie cash-in from Havoc and Prodigy, intended to keep their names active within our chosen genre while they figured out their next moves. This kind of thing happens a lot, especially now: artists will frequently drop singles to gauge interest in a full-length product, whether for their own purposes or to prove to their label that there is an audience for what they bring to the table. (This is mostly why Busta Rhymes has yet to drop a new album, even though it seems like the man keeps dropping singles left and right: I’m guessing the response hasn’t been buzzy enough to warrant his label investing the time and money into releasing an official project.) At least Mobb Deep, by way of owning their label, bypassed the need to focus-group their wares, choosing instead to unleash the motherfucker and letting the chips fall where they may.

It would be easy for me to make a comment about how Survival of the Fittest was met with so little interest that it triggered an unofficial Mobb Deep hiatus, one which will now never end, unless Havoc has a bunch of unreleased tracks hidden somewhere and someday feels the need to set some of them free.

Oh, you’re saying Mobb Deep is kind of famous for having tons of unreleased songs in their vaults and Hav will most likely release another group effort do in the future when he’s comfortable doing so, so Survival of the Fittest likely won’t be the final project we’ll ever hear from the group?

Cool, cool cool. That means I don’t have to feel bad about rolling my eyes at this release.

1. HIDE AWAY

Lyrically, the EP opener “Hide Away” is garbage. The chorus is terrible; Havoc raps as though the very concept had escaped him until the very point he stepped into the booth, where he decided that, hey, what the fuck, right?; and Cellblock P’s performance can be inferred by just how bad these bars are: “All my n----s is stand-up, all my bitches is bad as fuck / My life is so awesome, I got to stand back like, ‘What the fuck?’” Yep, he just rhymed “fuck” with “fuck”, for fucking fuck’s sake. Fuck. God damn it. However, what does matter on “Hide Away”, the lone aspect of the track worth giving a damn about, is Hav’s instrumental, whose drumline strikes and barely-perceptible melody combine to poke holes into your brain in order for the endorphins to come flooding out. The music is great, marking a possible alternate path for Mobb Deep to have taken while still playing to their strengths (relatively speaking  ̶  again, the bars suck). Alas, “Hide Away” wasn’t the right vehicle for the music. Ah well.

2. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST (ESPN REMIX)

I hope Havoc and Prodigy managed to cash a nice Disney check, because this remake of one of their finest early efforts is laughable at best. Commissioned by the Mickey Mouse-owned ESPN to be played during the NBA playoffs back in 2015, this reboot neuters the violent observations of a much-younger Hav and P in favor of general platitudes and basketball references, at least on Havoc’s part. Cellblock P is so indifferent to the cause that he just rips off his own verse from the original, superior “Survival of the Fittest” before he remembers that he should probably mention the NBA in a vague way, and even then he barely musters up the energy to do that. Hav, on the other hand, appeases the corporate hands feeding him with an instrumental that at least could be hired to dress up as the original track at children’s birthday parties, his half-assed attempts at bars about teamwork and victory and probably fundamentals or something, and even going so far as to alter the hook so that the television viewing audience wouldn’t find it to be so aggressive and bleak. I’d laugh at this more if it weren’t shitting all over an entire legacy. I hope Disney bought you each a house, motherfuckers.

3. WHAT’S GOING ON

Kinda liked this one, though. Havoc’s instrumental is a loop that sounds pretty fucking fantastic, as though it were snipped from the score of an epic film of the 1960’s or 1970s, giving Hav and P enough life to commit to their verses. Both of our hosts are entirely within their element, Havoc’s shit-talking clashing beautifully with Prodigy’s give-no-fucks demeanor, just like old times. “What’s Going On” suffers from a weak hook that isn’t bad as much as shrug, but brush that shit aside as I did and you’ll find a genuine late-period Mobb Deep track to enjoy. Sure, the instrumental sounds like something Nas would have used on his second of third album. So what? That just means it was pretty goddamn good.

4. LIFE IS WHAT YOU MAKE IT

Prodigy revives one of the better songs from his solo effort H.N.I.C. 3 for “Life Is What You Make It”. (I had to do some digging to figure that one out  ̶  even though I apparently liked this song when I wrote my review, I didn’t remember anything about it.) Utilizing the same (banging) S.C. instrumental as the original, Cellblock P recycles his second verse from his song, using most of his old performance while modifying a couple of bars to reference Mobb Deep as opposed to just himself, which I found to be fucking hysterical, but his awareness and generosity was a nice touch. Havoc fits like a glove into the proceedings, both of our hosts delivering kinda-sorta optimistic, motivational bars without losing their respective edges, and the result is an entertaining-as-hell effort that is deserving of a wider audience. Yeah, I know, but I said it and I meant it.

5. ALL ABOUT IT

The Yung Fokus beat itself was lively but neither of our hosts seems game throughout “All About It”, an exercise in braggadocio that succeeds only in encouraging aspiring artists to do the exact opposite of what is presented within just to remain relevant in our chosen genre. Prodigy’s stanza goes absolutely nowhere, while Havoc’s shit-talking inexplicably ends with the man boasting of having a foursome, and then throwing in “three hos” as though the listener couldn’t possibly comprehend just what he was even talking about. Fuck this song.

6. CONQUER

Either Havoc or Prodigy must want “Conquer” to ultimately be the song Mobb Deep is best known for, because this is the third time it has appeared on a proper group project, following its bonus track status on The Infamous Mobb Deep and its original incarnation on the Black Cocaine EP. “Conquer” is exactly the same as before: both of our hosts take turns over a Havoc instrumental that is as victorious as the song title would suggest, each talking as much bullshit as they can before the clock runs out. It doesn’t really fit on Survival of the Fittest, given that it wasn’t recorded for this EP in the first place, but as a flashback to a period when Mobb Deep were actively working their way back up the ladder, no longer wanting to be seen as a joke of their former selves, it… kind of works? There was absolutely no reason for it to pop up again, but life could be much worse.

THE LAST WORD: Survival of the Fittest isn’t a complete waste of twenty minutes: “What’s Going On” and the remake of “Life Is What You Make It” are certainly worth listening to if you’re a longtime stan of Mobb Deep. But if you look up the word ‘inessential’ in the dictionary, you’d find this EP sitting there, and you’d wonder exactly how Merriam-Webster Inc. let that slip past them in the editing process. The track commissioned by ESPN is trash and won’t receive any more virtual ink from me after this sentence, but the other songs on here represent Havoc and Prodigy at their worst lyrically: their bars seems rushed with no attention given to quality control, which you can hear in their weary deliveries, as though neither man gave a fuck about their continued legacy and merely wanted to capitalize on a slight surge of interest brought about by a certain song that won’t be named popping up in an unexpected place. And that’s just when they were actively recording: not for nothing is the final song of the EP a track that had previously appeared in two different goddamn fucking places. Still, “Hide Away” explores a musical direction that Havoc could still dive into in the future if he so desires, and “Conquer” isn’t a bad song, even if Mobb Deep will never get their wish of it becoming their theme. (“Shook Ones Pt. II” is pretty difficult to shake, as it should be.) So my feelings about Survival of the Fittest are conflicting: there’s no reason for this EP to exist, and it isn’t consistently good enough for me to recommend you both listen to it, and yet Mobb Deep stans will find something that they will enjoy on here, so I suppose it can’t be all bad. Perhaps this is what streaming was invented for. (It isn’t.)

-Max

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