A decent amount of rap beefs start over things like repping your city, your set,
or your own toughness. What do you do when you feel like someone is questioning your integrity
or maybe being hypocritical? As usual in this rap game, you diss them. You’ve seen the title,
you know who this beef is about but first I have to give some backstory. In the mid 90s the so
called “west coast vs east coast” beef was in full effect and the Dogg Pound and Snoop Dogg released
a song called “New York, New York” from the Dogg Pound’s debut studio album Dogg Food released in
September 1995. The song was the lead single from the album and according to Kurupt it was
a dedication to the city that started hip hop. While they were in Brooklyn filming the video,
Biggie was on the radio venting his frustration at allowing them to film there and apparently
gave out the location which led to the Dogg Pound’s trailer being shot at. This caused
the Dogg Pound and Snoop to change up the idea for the video to diss New York City and led to
the infamous kicking over the building scene by Snoop Dogg. In 1996 CNN responded to NY NY with
LA LA which features Tragedy Khadafi and Mobb Deep and was the second single from their debut studio
album the War Report which was released in June 1997. Now that that’s done, fast forward to 1998.
Jay-z released his third album, Vol. 2 Hard Knock Life which featured the single
“Money Cash Hoes” and on that song he has the line “What’s the dealings? It’s like New York’s been
soft ever since Snoop came through and crushed the buildings” which of course is a reference to the
Dogg Pound song NY NY. This prompted Prodigy to respond in interviews including one for the Source
on which he was on the cover of the magazine that month as a solo artist expressing his dislike for
Jay-Z due to his handling of the situation and the line. Years later in his autobiography titled “My
Infamous Life”: The autobiography of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy” he states that Jay-Z was dissed by them
but didn’t respond at all so he wasn’t fond of the line in the song referencing the beef.
Before any of this though there was a subliminal shot allegedly from Jay-Z to Prodigy.
On the song “Trife Life” from Mobb Deep’s second album, “The Infamous” Prodigy mentions the Marcy
projects on his verse, then on Jay-Z’s second album In My Lifetime Vol. 1 on the song “Where
I’m From” he starts his verse with “I’m from where the hammers rung, news cameras never come,
you and your man was from in every verse in your rhyme”. According to Prodigy the only person at
that point who had mentioned Marcy projects in a rhyme was him so it had to be aimed at him. Also
considering the “you and your man” implying it was two of them, that makes it more likely to be
a Mobb Deep reference. Either way this would all lead up to the 2001 Summer Jam where Jay-Z first
performed the song Takeover or at least the first 2 verses which was a diss to Prodigy. Takeover
is known by many as a Nas diss which became the main focus once the full version was featured on
Jay-Z’s 6th album, The Blueprint which released on September 11th 2001. On the Summer Jam stage Jay
had a picture of Prodigy as a kid in a Michael Jackson style outfit, which was from Prodigy’s
grandmother’s dance studio that he used to be a part of when he was younger. In the first verse of
Takeover Jay sticks to the subliminal shots such as using the term dunny, in reference to Prodigy
which is part of the dunn language that Prodigy and his crew often used. He ended the verse with
the lines “Don’t do it to me dunny cause I overdo it so you won’t confuse it with just rap music.”
Which would prove to be quite ironic a little bit later which I’ll be mentioning shortly.
On the second verse of the track Jay turns it much more direct however and on the Summer Jam stage
he performed it acapella and the crowd was in an uproar. He goes on further to diss Prodigy for his
height, the dancing, and Mobb Deep’s record sales not being as high as his own. He ended the verse
with the notorious line “You guys don’t want it with Hov, ask Nas he don’t want it with Hov” which
made the Jay-Z vs Nas beef that was also subliminal up till then public now as well.
Then of course verses 3 and 4 were added later on which went at Nas and Prodigy respectively.
This built some anticipation in fans to hear how Mobb Deep, Prodigy in particular would come back
on their next album. Especially considering the controversy regarding their previous album Murda
Muzik which was heavily bootlegged and wound up with the album being altered before release.
In response to this, Mobb Deep came at Jay on Mobb Deep's 5th album Infamy released in December
2001 specifically on the song "Crawlin" and also some shots were taken on the song "The Learning"
which features friend and frequent collaborator Big Noyd as well as rapper Vita from Murda Inc.
On “Crawlin” Prodigy goes at Jay-Z on both of his verses with lines referencing the
Summer Jam screen picture of Prodigy as well as making mention of Jay-Z
allegedly skipping out on rap award shows out of fear of Prodigy and crew.
General threatening lyrics are also sent to Jay in the third verse insinuating stealing
his watch among other things. Also he responds to the 1988 line from Takeover and makes a reference
to “Hawaiian Sophie”, the first single that Jay-Z was on with his then mentor Jaz-O. Overall
another solid diss. On the song “The Learning” Prodigy also disses Jay-Z on his verse as well
with more subliminals but a very clear shot at Jay with a reference to the Summer Jam screen incident
and the Takeover verses. Prodigy has some more of his general violence and threats. Basically
Prodigy doing what he does best. Apparently the video for “The Learning” lacked an appearance
from Vita who is on the chorus because Jay-Z reached out to Irv Gotti to block Vita from being
in the video as she was signed to Irv’s record label Murda Inc. This helped Prodigy learn how
Jay-Z most likely managed to get his hands on the picture that was used on the Summer Jam screen
as Ashanti who was also signed to Murda Inc at the time apparently had been a member of the dance
studio that Prodigy’s grandmother owned. Around this time Cormega released his debut album, The
Realness which includes the track “Thun and Kicko” which features Prodigy. On this track Cormega
disses Nas, and Prodigy sends some more subliminal shots allegedly at Jay-Z. Besides these tracks
freestyles were done back and forth regarding the beef as well. One such freestyle was an instance
where Jay-Z and his new artists like Beanie Siegel and the like were at a radio station. Beanie spit
a subliminal line dissing Mobb Deep and also rapping was an artist named H Money Bags, which
is extremely similar to E Money Bags, a fellow rapper and friend of Prodigy who also knew Jay-Z.
This prompted Prodigy to get on the phone with the radio station for them to get Jay on the phone and
then he put E Money Bags on the phone to ask Jay directly about H Money Bags. Shortly afterwards
Prodigy would call Funkmaster Flex to see if they could come up and do the same thing as Jay and
crew did and was told that they could. Once they arrived at the station however they were denied
entry as apparently Flex’s boss had told him that they can’t as it would cause more conflict.
Shortly afterwards E-Money Bags would be killed allegedly due to an altercation he had involving
Kenneth Mcgriff aka Supreme. According to Prodigy’s autobiography in October 2001
he went to Puffy’s restaurant Justin’s with his crew and the DJ there made an announcement that
Jay-Z and Jermaine Dupri were there which led to Prodigy and crew wanting to confront Jay.
They waited outside for Jay to leave and when the two saw Prodigy and crew, Jermaine Dupri
walked off and Jay walked towards Prodigy with his hand extended to shake and then Jay told him that
there’s no beef, it’s just music. As I mentioned earlier that is the exact opposite of what he said
on Takeover which is ironic. Somewhere around this time Prodigy again took shots at Jay on the track
“Mobb Niggaz” by the Infamous Mobb which this song apparently has more than one version,
one with Prodigy just doing the chorus and one with him rapping a verse as well so if you wanna
hear it make sure to listen to the right one. He disses Jay specifically with the lines "I Pledge
alliegance to my Infamous flag, niggas get tagged and bagged, for comin at my familia This ain't the
Roc nigga, we ain't them faggot ass niggas" The Roc is clearly a reference to Roc-a-Fella records,
Jay-Z's label. Later on, on the remix of Young Jeezy’s “I Put On” from his album “The Recession”
released in September 2008 Jay-Z on his verse again referenced the 2001 Summer Jam situation
with the line “I put Prodigy in his place on that Summer Jam screen”. Jay-Z has been known
as someone who tends to take more subliminal shots at people but in his beef with Prodigy he did take
some pretty direct ones as well. However he did seem to focus more of his attention on dissing Nas
after he dropped “Takeover”. Perhaps he saw Nas as a better opponent or maybe as Prodigy claims
Jay really was scared of Prodigy and his crew. Allegedly Cormega talked to Jay-Z and warned
him about how Prodigy is a livewire and likely to shoot him and Jay-Z avoided going to certain award
shows in order to avoid Prodigy and crew. Either way, both of these artists went on to continue
to release solo albums, collaboration albums, and more to varying degrees of commercial and critical
success but both go down as greats in hip hop, especially in NYC. Unfortunately Prodigy passed
due to complications from his sickle cell disease in June 2017 at the age of 42 and according to
Jay-Z a few years before his death they did speak in a club and everything was good between them
and stated that he had much respect for Prodigy and has mentioned at some point
that Prodigy could have been one of the greatest rappers ever. As I’ve mentioned this is a beef
that was overlooked due to the beef that was brewing between Nas and Jay-Z for a while,
then also Nas and Prodigy were beefing as well around the time. It makes for an interesting
situation overall, Prodigy on interviews has even stated that he fell back from the beef
once Ether came out as he admits that he felt like he couldn’t make a diss track as good as that one.
Ether is one of my favorite diss tracks at all as well as Nas being one of my favorite rappers
along with Prodigy. They’re easily some of the greatest artists that came out of NY in the 90s
overall. Now that about wraps it up for this episode of the Rap Beef series. I’ve seen some
people recommending beefs to cover in the comment section as I’ve asked and I’m taking some of them
into consideration so thanks for that. What are your thoughts on this beef? What beef
would you like me to cover next? What’s your favorite songs by Jay-Z or Prodigy? Leave the
answer in the comment section below and as always thanks for watching, click that subscribe button,
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