Quotes from Prodigy

In the beginning, we might have been focused on totally just music and being famous, just wanting to have fame and make hot music, but as we got older, we had to understand that this is a business and that our moves need to be calculated.

When my family first moved to Hempstead in the 1960s, they were one of the first black families. It used to be an all-white neighborhood, but there was white flight when the black people with money started moving in. When I was, like, 13 or 14, Hempstead had just become all black, and the poverty became worse and worse.

Growing up in bad neighborhoods, you see and experience a lot.

From the neighborhoods that we grew up in, we had to learn how to deal with people. How to keep certain people at a distance, how to cut people off completely.

I don't like new people coming around me. I'm going to really be leery and watch you and take my time before I embrace you.

Sickle cell was my life before hip-hop. I ain't really have no life - that was it.

'Cobra Clutch' was to let the world know we ain't going nowhere. We got the game in the cobra clutch.

Extreme pain to extreme pleasure has been the story of my entire life.

Mobb Deep is a street-rap group. We from off the streets.

I just remember the feeling of being dropped from Island and having our hearts broken. Because we were given a chance to put out an album to the world. We got the chance for people to know who we were. We wanted to make our dreams come true and do hip-hop for a living, but we didn't do it right.

In my lyrics, I used to always state two years ahead. I did that to make it seem like we were ahead of our time - a time capsule almost. It had never been done before.

There isn't just one black experience out here.

When I first went in, I realized there's no green vegetables. They serve, like, spinach once every two weeks. The three meals they serve inmates every day is like slop.

Our style of hip-hop, our style of beats, our style of rhymes - you gonna give us burn. We gonna get our burn that we deserve.

We'll never change the fact that we are hardcore hip-hop and we make rebellious hip-hop music, and we're going to keep doing that and progress with our production, progress with our lyrical styles, be creative, and just have fun with it.

Actually doing a song, going to the studio, and just getting out on paper your anger makes you feel a little better sometimes.

The sickle-cell got me where doctors said I couldn't play sports, I couldn't overexert myself.

When I was locked up, I went through a big personal change with my attitude and spiritual, everything. I went through some major changes locked up.