My Infamous Life: The Autobiography of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy with Laura Checkoway. Also available in softcover February 7, 2012. My Infamous Life:
The Autobiography of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy
with Laura Checkoway
Touchstone Hardcover /
Simon & Schuster, Price $24.99
303 pages with 16-pages of full color photographs

Born and raised in the rough Queensbridge housing project in Long Island City, Albert “Prodigy” Johnson and Kejuan Muchita, better known as “Havoc” met as teenagers in the 1980s.

Shaped by the violence around them the duo created a new form of rap with lyrics that were more graphic, poetic and shocking than compared to contemporary rap songs of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The year was 1986, the music of LL Cool J, Run-D.M.C. and others could be heard from boom boxes on every street corner, and a young prodigy immediately focused his talents and ambition on making it as a rapper. A couple of years later, as a student at New York’s prestigious High School of Art and Design, he hooked up with a youth nicknamed Havoc.

Taking the name Mobb Deep, they released the now classic album “The Infamous” in 1995.

My Infamous Life: The Autobiography of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy is an honest and often brutal account of the rapper’s personal challenges including his battle with sickle-cell anemia that brought pain and frequent hospitalizations-and the turmoil that shaped his professional career. Born in 1974, Prodigy was part of a family cultured in music and dance. His mother, Fatima Frances Johnson, hit the pop music scene as a member of The Crystals, whose records included such chart-toppers as “And Then He Kissed Me” and “He’s a Rebel”.

Prodigy’s grandmother, Bernice Johnson, danced at the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem and became the proprietor of a successful dance studio in Jamaica where he began taking classes at the age of six. His father, a heroin addict and petty crook, taught him other kinds of lessons.

In My Infamous Life, Prodigy captures in vivid detail, the impact of hip-hop culture, including its effect on his personal life and outlook. In several gripping passages written in prison, he recalls how growing up in the concrete-jungle of New York influenced the way he acted, talked and rapped. He writes movingly about the people in his life including his grandmother, mother, wife and his partner, Havoc.

Readers of My Infamous Life will also enjoy the many references to Queens that appear on almost every page of the book that is illustrated with black and white and color photos showing the rapper’s life on the streets of Queens from childhood to celebrity.

The book is edited by Laura Checkoway, a well-known pop culture journalist who has written for Vibe, XXL, The Village Voice, RollingStone.com and various other publications.

The soft cover edition will arrive on bookshelves on February 7, 2012 and can be pre-ordered on www.amazon.com.