I think the big difference between ranking This and Mobb’s albums are the themes and tones and what ultimately you identify with more.
Cabin in The Sky is more “bright” and hopeful. It approaches death and mortality from the perspective that our departed loved ones aren’t truly gone, that they are watching over us, protecting us, and guiding us, until the day comes that we are reunited with them. Its a testament to faith, hope, love and the power of memory and legacy.
Infinite is darker, even though themes of higher power and existence after death are prevalent, its also eerily prophetic in spaces where you hear prodigy discussing death and his own mortality in verses that were written presumably years before his passing. Taking into account Prodigy was also prone to conspiracy theories and the more morbid side of hip hop storytelling, its an album that feels right at home from the group that brought you projects aptly titled Hell On Earth and Amerikaz Nightmare.
Both are expertly produced and lovingly crafted. Havoc and Maseo & Pos took extra care to make albums that emblematic of what their groups ultimately stood for, and thats an attention to lyrical & musical detail that made them amongst the very best Hip Hop has ever had to offer. There’s no true weakness in either of these two works of art, it just comes down to what you gravitate towards more as a listener.
9th Wonder once made an instagram post where he highlighted July 2, 1996 as the year that Hip Hop made drew a line and made a complete split between the underground and mainstream, with the release or Nas’s It Was Written and De La Soul’s Stakes is High. What 9th failed to highlight however, is that both albums were released via major labels with both acts in similar positions. Nas needed to prove he could sell records after the universally adored but commercially disappointing performance of Illmatic; and De La Soul needed to do the same thing after the acclaimed Buhloon Mindstate experienced middling sales numbers. De La Soul put away the “happy” and “optimistic” vibes of their first three albums to dabble in a more lyrically serious, sonically somber project that fought to establish them as worthy in a genre experiencing a rapid progression into “reality rap”. Nas traded in the “gritty poet with a heart that bleeds for the streets” mantra for the cinematic auteur infusion of Donald Goines meets Martin Scorsese. Instead of painting pictures, Nas directed films, showcasing the decadence of drug dealing and high class thuggery in all of its ugly, excessive, beautiful glory. Nas & De La Soul both decided that the mantra of “rapper’s rapper” was just too constrictive and unrewarding to continue to exist within its contradictory, ultimately asinine rules. And now today almost 30 years later both acts stand united in the mission of preserving Hip Hop’s core values through the artists who live, breathe, and embody those values.
Its truly a beautiful thing to witness.
