Murda Muzik

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

The release of Murda Muzik was originally planned for the beginning of 1999, but Loud Records switched distributors from RCA to Columbia. Murda Muzik was shelved until this deal was finalized. Within this time the album was heavily bootlegged and Mobb Deep had to record new songs to make sure fans would still buy the album. The duo recorded 5 new songs, which replaced tracks which were previously recorded:

• "Spread Love"
• "I'm Going Out" (featuring Lil' Cease)
• "Can't Fuck Wit" (featuring Raekwon)
• "It's Mine" (featuring Nas)
• "Quiet Storm (Remix)" (featuring Lil' Kim)

Bootleg tracks

Murda Muzik leaked in early 1999. The following tracks were on multiple bootlegs that didn't make the final cut.

Full tracks:

• "Feel My Gat Blow"
• "Thrill Me" (featuring Big Noyd)
• "3 the Hard Way" (featuring Big Noyd), also called "You Fuckin’ Wit" and "3 From NYC"
• "This One" (featuring Big Noyd), also called "Pyramid Points"
• "Perfect Plot" (featuring Big Noyd), also called "Mobb Coming Thru" and "We Got The Drop"
• "Pile Raps, also called "Power Rap"
• "Nobody Likes Me"
• "Shiesty" (featuring Big Noyd), also called "Fuck That Bitch"
• "QB Meets Southside" (featuring Sticky Fingaz and X1)

Original versions of retail tracks:

• "Deer Park" (featuring Cormega) ("What's Ya Poison" with intro), also called "How You Want It"
• "Let a Ho Be a Ho" with intro
• "Streets Raised Me (OG Mix)", also called "That True Shit", with a different sounding hook.
• "Street Kingz" (featuring Nas) is "U.S.A. (Aiight Then)" with a Nas verse. Columbia didn't want to clear Nas for two songs. They had to cut his verse from "U.S.A. (Aiight then)" since he also appears on the song "It's Mine".
• "White Lines" ("Quiet Storm" without Havoc on the hook). Prodigy talked in between verses, it was mastered in a way that this talking sounded like it came out of a megaphone.
• "Thug Muzik", has a verse of Mike Delorean from Bars & Hooks instead of Prodigy.
• "Murda Muzik", longer track with a final verse from Prodigy that ultimately ended up on "Thug Muzik" in the retail release. There's also a version without that final verse but a freestyle from Cormega instead.

Promotion

The duo toured on the Family Values Tour for the album. Appearing on the second edition in 1999 with other nu metal, hip-hop and rap rock acts at the time, they supported the first half of the tour; appearing on the first 12 dates alongside headliners Limp Bizkit with support from Filter, Staind, The Crystal Method, Run-DMC, Korn from September 21st to October 8th.

Murda Muzik received generally positive reviews from music critics. Joe Gross of Spin commented, "Balancing somber elegy and hardened battle verses is the essence of ruffneck hip-hop art, and nobody writes 'em fiercer than the Mobb".^[9] NME praised Havoc's "redemptive, soul-tinged beats" which gave "breathing space from the otherwise suffocatingly grim atmosphere", concluding that the album is "more radical, more challenging, than much of the so-called avant-garde music scene".^[5] Reviewing the original (bootlegged) version of the album, The Source's Carlito Rodriguez stated, "despite the almost insurmountable odds against MCs improving upon already monumental material, Hav and P have done it again", and also commended Prodigy for his introspective lyrics.^[8] Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly called Mobb Deep "too damn serious for their own good", however, he conceded that "Taken individually, a few of the tracks on Murda Muzik have a somber power".^[4] In his consumer guide for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau gave the album a B− rating in his annual "Turkey Shoot",^[10] indicating "a bad record of some general import".^[11]

In a retrospective review, AllMusic's M.F. DiBella regarded Murda Muzik as "an arguable masterpiece in the Puffy and Master P era", and also praised Havoc for achieving "a high level of mastery in his production efforts, a truly signature style of deep bass grooves, piercing organs, ice-cold snare pops, melodic samples, and haunting orchestral snippets".^[1] Writing in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, critic Chris Ryan stated, "With its deluded dreams of Mafia invincibility, Murda Muzik is only decent".^[12]

Summarize Fact Check

Credits adapted from the album's liner notes.^[13]

Intro

• "Crime Inc. Theme" by Giles Swayne
• contains an excerpt from a speech of Ronald Reagan^[14]

Adrenaline

• "Ballad Of The Decomposing Man" by Steve Hackett

Where Ya Heart At

• "Fear" by Sade

It's Mine

• "The Boy Is Mine" by Brandy & Monica (interpolation)
• "Scarface Cues" by Giorgio Moroder

Quiet Storm

• "White Lines (Don't Do It)" by Grandmaster Melle Mel
• "A Quiet Storm" by Smokey Robinson

The Realest

• "Born to Lose You" by Ecstasy, Passion & Pain

I'm Going Out

• "Farewell" by Miklos Rozsa

Thug Muzik

• "The Toys" by George Winston and Meryl Streep

What's Ya Poison

• "1000 Rads" by David Axelrod

Where Ya From

• "The Champ" by The Mohawks

Quiet Storm (Remix)

• "10% Dis" by MC Lyte