Who We Are: Mobb Deep, From Queensbridge

We are Mobb Deep: Havoc and Prodigy, a hip-hop duo from Queensbridge, Queens, New York City. This is where our story starts, and where every design in this store comes from.

Where did we start?

Havoc and Prodigy met at the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan. In the early 1990s we started rapping together as Poetical Prophets. You may have read somewhere that our first name was "The Infamous". It wasn't. That name came later, on our second album.

Where does the name Mobb Deep come from?

We changed the name in 1992, partly on a suggestion from Puff Daddy. Prodigy explained it this way: the thirty or forty friends who rolled with us looked like a mob, and "deep" was our slang for a big group. Put together, that's Mobb Deep. The same year we signed our first deal, with 4th & B'way Records.

What do we sound like?

East Coast, hardcore hip-hop, with a dark and hardcore delivery. Havoc produced most of our beats: dark, minimal and cold, made for the streets we came from. Prodigy and Havoc traded verses over them on every record, from Juvenile Hell in 1993 to Infinite in 2025.

Who are we today?

Prodigy died on 20 June 2017 in Las Vegas, after a performance, from complications of sickle-cell anemia. Havoc kept the name moving. In 2019 he took the Murda Muzik 20th anniversary on the road with Big Noyd and L.E.S. In 2025 he finished Infinite with The Alchemist, built on unreleased Prodigy vocals, and it came out on 10 October 2025.

What will you find here?

The Infamous lockups: our name and our second album, in script and in heavy block type. Murda Muzik: the 25th anniversary design, in red. Queensbridge to the world: designs from our corner of New York.

Every design comes on tees, long sleeves, crewnecks and hoodies. Shop all our designs.