Mobb Deep were Prodigy (Albert Johnson) and Havoc (Kejuan Muchita) from the Queensbridge Houses in Queens. With The Infamous (1995) and songs like Shook Ones (Part II) and Survival of the Fittest they defined the dark New York sound of the nineties. They had no personal history with Tupac, and still ended up in the middle of his feud.
How it started
The trigger was a dispute between coasts, not people. In late 1995 Death Row’s Tha Dogg Pound released New York, New York, which New York took as a provocation. In early 1996 Capone-N-Noreaga, with Mobb Deep and Tragedy Khadafi, answered with L.A., L.A. There were also rumours that Mobb Deep had snubbed members of the Outlawz at a concert. The line about “Thug Life” that is often mentioned can now be pinned down: in a 1996 conversation with Kevin Powell for Vibe, Tupac himself named “Thug life, we still livin’ it” from Survival of the Fittest as a trigger. Havoc suggested the same on the Drink Champs podcast in 2025, Tupac took the line as a jab at his announcement that he was leaving the “thug” life behind.
“Hit ‘Em Up” and the reply
In June 1996 Tupac named Mobb Deep on Hit ‘Em Up and mocked Prodigy’s sickle-cell anaemia, a serious hereditary disease. He went after them again on When We Ride on Our Enemies and, on the Makaveli album, on Bomb First (My Second Reply) and Against All Odds. Mobb Deep replied the same year with Drop a Gem on ‘Em, first as a promotional single and then on their album Hell on Earth.
Havoc later told interviewer Jack Thriller that he was actually pleased at the time: he didn’t even know what the beef was about, “2Pac dissing us. We about to sell some records.” They never met Tupac; Havoc said he only ever saw him from a distance.
After Tupac’s death
After Tupac died, Prodigy and Havoc spoke about him with respect. It is often said that they removed Drop a Gem on ‘Em from their album as a result. That is not quite right: according to Havoc the single was pulled after Tupac’s death, but the song stayed on Hell on Earth, released on November 19, 1996. Prodigy died on June 20, 2017, in Las Vegas, where he was hospitalised with complications from his illness; the coroner ruled he choked accidentally. He was 42.
For copyright reasons, and because the lines consist mostly of insults, passages from both diss tracks are not reproduced here. The bigger picture is on the East vs. West page.