It's funny because in hindsight I think Mobb has made worse "commercial" songs like the shyt with Lil John and some of the songs on Blood Money, etc. 112 wasn't bad. The instrumental itself isn't a soft beat or anything like that. Havoc did his thing.
But this was the first time the public really heard Prodigy's thugged out spoken word style that made people say he fell off. I vividly remember imitating Prodigy's verse really monotone in high school and pretending to fall asleep and wake back up while rapping it.
At the time yeah, everything about it was bad at the time. Takeover was already making Mobb look bad, then this song didn't help, then Prodigy falling asleep on the song and rapping different on Infamy didn't help. The video made it much worse too. The song on its own wouldn't have been as bad.
They should have dropped Get Away after Takeover came out. This was NOT the next song to drop. Perception is reality, and Jay made Mobb Deep look not so great on there (and Mobb Deep is y favorite group of all time), and then Nas made Prodigy look bad too on Stillmatic. So they were getting shyt from all angles and then dropped this song that on its own might not have been as bad.
Mobb should have just said fukk it and dropped Crawlin or some kind of response after Jay and Nas went at them. Even a hard record like Get Away would have been good.