You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe.

It's usually hard to pin down when a genre of music starts, but people point to this one party in August 1973 in the Bronx as the moment where hip hop was born.

That makes this year the 50th anniversary of hip hop.

And in honor of that, I wanted to revisit an episode looking back at one of hip hop's classic tracks,

Shukh Ones, Part 2 by Mob Deep.

So here's the episode that I originally recorded in June 2020 when I spoke to Havoc from Mobb Deep.

This episode contains explicit language.

The rapper's Prodigy and Havoc met when they were still in high school in New York.

Havocke grew up in Queens, in Queensbridge, the biggest public housing projects in the country.

And as a teenager, Prodigy lived there for a while too. The two of them formed Mob Deep in 1991. In 1995, they put out

their second album, The Infamous. It was a success when it came out, but in the 25 years since,

the influence of the album has only grown. Complex named it one of the 10 best rap albums of the 90s,

and pitchfork gave the album a rare perfect score, 10 out of 10.

The Washington Post called it a masterpiece of hardcore rap,

and in Slate, it was called one of the best albums of the 90s

and one of the very best hip-hop albums ever made.

The biggest song from the album was Shook Ones, Part 2.

Havocke made the now legendary beat that he and Prodigy rap over.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary, Havocke told me the story of how the whole song came together.

Prodigy passed away in 2017 from complications due to sickle cell anemia, a debilitating

disease that he'd battled his entire life.

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