Prodigy

A Musical Family

Prodigy was born Albert Johnson on November 2, 1974, in Hempstead on Long Island. He came from a family of musicians. His grandfather Budd Johnson was a jazz saxophonist, his great-uncle Keg Johnson played trombone, his mother sang with The Crystals, his father sang in the doo-wop group The Chanters, and his grandmother ran a dance school at Carnegie Hall. He had sickle cell disease from birth and lived with it all his life. At the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan he met Havoc, and the two started the group that became Mobb Deep.

The Infamous Era

After their debut Juvenile Hell (1993) went nowhere, Mobb Deep broke through with The Infamous in 1995. It went gold within two months of release. Prodigy's writing on that album was paranoid, blunt and full of detail, and his opening verse on "Shook Ones, Part II" is one of the most quoted in New York rap. Hell on Earth (1996) and Murda Muzik (1999) kept the duo at the top of the East Coast street scene.

Solo Career and Prison

His first solo album, H.N.I.C., came out on November 14, 2000. It reached No. 18 on the Billboard 200 and went gold, and its lead single "Keep It Thoro," produced by The Alchemist, became a signature record. Return of the Mac (2007), produced almost entirely by The Alchemist, started out as a mixtape and was upgraded to a full album. It entered the Billboard 200 at No. 32, with "Mac 10 Handle" as a single. Later in 2007 he was sentenced to three and a half years for a gun possession charge. H.N.I.C. Pt. 2 came out in 2008 while he was locked up, and he was released in March 2011.

Later Work and Legacy

After his release he kept busy. He published the memoir My Infamous Life (2011), a novel and a prison cookbook. He also put out H.N.I.C. 3 (2012), The Bumpy Johnson Album (2012) and Albert Einstein with The Alchemist (2013). Mobb Deep made up after a public falling-out and released The Infamous Mobb Deep in 2014. Prodigy died in Las Vegas on June 20, 2017, at age 42. He had been in the hospital for sickle cell complications, and the cause of death was ruled accidental choking. His final album, Hegelian Dialectic (The Book of Revelation), had come out earlier that year. Havoc later used his archived vocals for the Mobb Deep album Infinite (2025).