READ AN EXCERPT FROM PRODIGY'S NEW BOOK ABOUT N.O.R.E!

[Editors note: below is an excerpt from Mobb Deep rapper Prodigy's autobiography where details an incident that occured between his crew and N.O.R.E. before the pair built a friendship.]

One night that winter, Hav and I were on the block with Karate Joe, Gotti, Nitty, Trip, this kid we called Bill Cosby, and this other kid Johnny. Havoc started flipping out, saying he heard Tragedy was f------g with his lady Shawna on the low and he wanted to step to Tragedy about it. We all walked over to Capone’s building next door where Tragedy, Capone, and N.O.R.E. hung out. Hav knocked on Capone’s door and asked him to tell Tragedy to come outside. Tragedy came out with N.O.R.E. and Capone.

“What’s up, man, you f------g with Shawna?” Hav asked. Tragedy said it wasn’t true but Hav wasn’t trying to hear it.

“I know you f------g with Shawna, stop lying!” Hav punched Tragedy in the face and knocked him down. While he was getting back up, Karate Joe warned Tragedy, “You better not hit him back!” Hav punched Tragedy and knocked him down again while we surrounded them, watching. N.O.R.E. was getting nervous seeing the n---a who he thought had strength in QB getting his ass beat—he was worried he was gonna be next. So he reached for his gun, pulled it out, and shot one bullet at
the ground in between all of us.

The bullet bounced off the cement and hit my man Johnny in the shinbone. N.O.R.E. ran for his life out of the projects. Tragedy and Capone ran into the building and someone drove Johnny to the hospital right away. The next day, Johnny came through the block on crutches with a cast on his leg. N.O.R.E. could never show his face in Queensbridge again.

About a month passed and some unknowing fool set up a show for Mobb Deep and Capone-N-Noreaga at a little club called Krystals on Merrick Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens, across the street from the bus terminal and up the block from my grandmother’s dance school. The only reason we went was so we could catch N.O.R.E. and torture him for what he did to Johnny.

The whole crew pulled up and parked our trucks in the bus terminal facing the club to get a good lookat everybody out front. Tragedy and Capone were standing at the front door facing us. Nitty spotted N.O.R.E. walking over to them. “Anyone got a razor?” Nitty asked Twin and me, but we didn’t. Nitty, Twin, and Money No approached N.O.R.E.

“Come over here so we can talk,” Nitty told him, putting his arm around N.O.R.E.’s neck and walking him into the street. After a few steps, Nitty started punching N.O.R.E. in the face while he had him in a headlock. N.O.R.E. dropped to the ground and the crew jumped him. Gotti, Havoc, and I stood by the trucks and watched them beat the clothes off that boy. Man, I never saw somebody get jumped so bad!

They were like dogs fighting over a piece of meat. Karate Joe grabbed N.O.R.E. by what was left of his shirt and dragged him to the corner so he could have him all to himself. He focused strictly on his rib cage, destroying N.O.R.E.’s ribs with punch after punch. Nitty snatched N.O.R.E.’s Jesus piece from the ground and we hopped back in our trucks.

While N.O.R.E. was getting jumped, his boys Tragedy and Capone didn’t move. They just stood in front of the club watching the whole thing. Some of N.O.R.E.’s people carried him to a parking lot around the corner. I already knew what was going to happen next. “You know they’re about to come back from the parking lot with guns,” I told Twin Gambino. We sat and waited.

I popped the hood and told Twin Gambino to get my gun out. I’d just bought an automatic .22 with a
twelve-shot clip, but like an a--hole I’d never tested it out. After a few minutes, just as I predicted, a few of N.O.R.E.’s people came dragging him from the parking lot with a TEC-9. I was sitting in the
driver’s seat; Gambino was outside, standing at my door. We had the drop on them, meaning we could move on them before they saw it coming. “Start shooting,” I told Twin calmly, but the gun didn’t fire. The piece of shit was broken! N.O.R.E.’s people started unloading their gun on us. As their bullets started to explode, Gambino got frustrated with my broken gun and threw it at them. Ha!

“Shoot him!” N.O.R.E. pointed at Nitty, who was in between my truck and Havoc’s truck. “Right there!” Whoever had the gun shot Nitty in his back as he was trying to jump into my back seat. Plus the shooter dumped the entire forty-two-shot clip at us and not one of the shots hit our two trucks. I was shocked. The only target they hit was the person they were after. - My Infamous Life: The Autobiography of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy (Simon and Schuster)