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Queensbridge, New York is an important place for hip-hop. Not since Motown, 25 years earlier, has such an astonishing number of artists with a distinctive, sought after sound, emerged from such a specific neighborhood. Nas, Marley Marl, Cormega–these are just a few of the huge names that sprang from America’s largest housing projects, located just across the bridge from Manhattan in Queens. Since the early 1980s, Queensbridge has been a veritable hotbed for new directions in East Coast hip-hop.

And no rap-group has drawn inspiration from Queensbridge more vividly than Mobb Deep. Composed of rappers Havoc and Prodigy, Mobb Deep create music that makes you feel like you, too, grew up in Queensbridge. Listen to Shook Ones Pt. 2 enough times, and you’ll feel like you could stab an unlucky sucker’s brain with his nosebone.

Jesse sat down with Prodigy, aka Anthony Johnson, after the release of his autobiography, My Infamous Life in 2011. Prodigy had just recently been released from prison, where he spent three years on gun charges. He talks about growing up with sickle-cell anemia, being dragged along on his father’s jewelry store robberies as a teen, and how he used his time in prison for some serious personal transformation.

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Carolyn Kellogg, book critic and staff writer for the LA Times, joins us to recommend two of her all-time favorite books.

First, she recommends Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler. This hardboiled Los Angeles noir features Chandler’s iconic language–analogies stronger than the libations his protagonists down in LA’s most dimly lit nightclubs.

Kellogg’s next pick is Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying Of Lot 49. At less than 200 pages, The Crying Of Lot 49 is an accessible, pun-filled entry into the dense world of Pynchon.

Read more of Carolyn’s writing on books, authors, and publishing online at the LA Times’ blog Jacket Copy.

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If “You’ve Got A Friend In Me,” is the only thing you think of when you hear the name Randy Newman, we’ve got an Outshot for you.

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