Infinite

In hip-hop’s more than five-decade history, Queensbridge stands firmly as one of the genre’s foundational, load-bearing pillars. The same outer-borough NYC locale where MC Shan laid down the rap gauntlet with his seminal single “The Bridge” got reinforced further in the 1990s and 2000s by two more sons of the namesake housing development, Havoc and Prodigy. Their run as Mobb Deep hit its stride with 1995’s *The Infamous*, with the pair remaining a force to be reckoned with both lyrically and musically for another two decades. Were it not for Prodigy’s untimely and tragic passing in 2017, it stands to reason that they’d still be repping QB as a unit today, something the release of *Infinite* demonstrates. More than a decade after their presumed swan song, the double-disc *The Infamous Mobb Deep*, this posthumous collaboration not only honors the duo’s legacy but aims to advance what they cultivated as an enduring, relevant art form. With production duties divided between The Alchemist—Prodigy’s second-most-prolific co-conspirator—and Havoc himself, *Infinite* makes their case with beats and rhymes that feel downright timeless. Whether nodding to golden-age hip-hop heroics on “My Era,” cruising from the crib to the casino on “Taj Mahal,” or shrewdly menacing the opposition on “Gunfire,” their thematic bars seamlessly capture the rap veterans’ mindset. Nostalgia certainly has its place here, and the appearances by Big Noyd on the grimy “The M. The O. The B. The B.” and Nas on the more celebratory “Pour the Henny” keep that classic Queensbridge presence in prominent view. Indeed, most of the features come from artists who were aligned with the Mobb in the *Infamous* days, with Wu-Tang Clan spitters Ghostface Killah and Raekwon reprising their “Right Back at You” roles on “Clear Black Nights.” Yet there’s also a genuine vibrancy here so rarely found on albums released in this particular fashion, the unmistakable interplay between the core duo enlivening moments like “Against the World” and “Score Points” and further imbued with that improbable reunion spirit via the Clipse collab “Look at Me.”

The duo’s ninth album—and its first since Prodigy’s death—contains reconstructed songs that impressively retain the two rappers’ chemistry, though mostly sound like a retread of the pair’s glory days.