Let’s get it out of the way: Prodigy never recovered from The Takeover. Ever since Jay put him up on that summer jam screen, P’s once agile flow has slowed down into Snoop Dogg territory. Worse yet, after Mobb Deep’s embarrassing G-Unit album, it seemed that the once feared duo was totally lost in the wilderness, unaware of what made them dope in the first place. Thankfully, Alchemist had the remedy: 14 soul beats, an album’s worth of paranoia and violence and absolutely no label interference. The result? Return of the Mac, Prodigy’s best record since Murda Music. Using his now gravelly voice to his advantage, Prodigy reinvents himself as a hardened veteran gangster, recovering the menace of his teenage years but cloaking it in a veil of bitterness and experience. Meanwhille ALC delivers the performance of a lifetime, a sampledelic blacksploitation ode to New York’s golden era. Gangster Music done right.–Sach O
Download:
MP3: Prodigy-“Stuck on You”
MP3: Prodigy-“Return of the Mac”
