ALBUM REVIEWS
Fred Again.. has been on a journey. Over the last few years, he’s successfully – and seemingly effortlessly – pivoted from behind-the-scenes songwriter and producer (albeit one in demand by the likes of Ed Sheeran, BTS and Charli XCX) to the main event. He’s swiftly become one of the biggest names in electronic music and, just a few weeks ago, became the first dance act to headline Reading & Leeds following summers of steadily growing festival slots.
At the current peak of his ascent, the DJ and producer has returned with an album that plays to his strengths: making electronic music that appeals to the heart and soul as well as the feet. Like his ‘Actual Life’ series, the trilogy of albums that helped give him his breakthrough, ‘Ten Days’ is emotional and reflective, and gorgeously so.
Where ‘Actual Life’ was underpinned by a narrative of grief, this new record deals with another classic subject: the rise and fall of a relationship and the impact we have on each other’s lives, told through ten songs that each represent a different day over a period of time. “There’s been a lot of biggg mad crazy moments in the last year,” Fred (real name Fred Gibson) wrote on Instagram when he announced the album in August. “But basically all of these are about really very small quiet intimate moments. Some of them are like the most intensely joyful things I have felt, and some of them are the other side of things.”
That dichotomy is naturally felt across the two halves of ‘Ten Days’. On the first side, there are big swathes of blissed-out, balmy euphoria, like the Obongjayar-led ‘Adore U’, which brings the record bubbling to life, or ‘Just Stand There’, which is steered by Irish singer-songwriter Soak. The latter finds its guest vocalist delivering a spoken-word sermon on the power of someone saying “I love you”. “I just stand there and my one-bed apartment feels like a coliseum,” they share, comparing that feeling to the brilliantly specific “first crunch of Tayto cheese and onion crisps”. As they speak, Gibson’s production builds its layers up into something that reflects the heady rush of love: needling, messy, intricate, like it could collapse at any moment.
On the flip side, there’s the crumbling and dissolution, represented by the only true dud on the album in ‘I Saw You’. It suffers from appearing in the tracklist right after ‘Glow’ – one of the liveliest, truest dance tracks on the record that reunites Gibson with Four Tet and Skrillex, along with Duskus. But even without that rapturous song ahead of it, it feels like ‘I Saw You’ would fall flat anyway, as it lacks the spark of the album’s better offerings.
There are still some beautiful moments to be had in this half, though. ‘Where Will I Be’, a reworking of a 1995 Emmylou Harris song, mixes the poeticism of the original lyrics, emotively delivered by the country icon, with minimal, delicately utilised synths. The Joy Anonymous-featuring ‘Peace U Need’, meanwhile, offers an affecting idea: that even if things don’t turn out the way we’d hope, our legacy in someone’s life can still live on. “I let you take a piece of me,” its key line goes. “I hope you get the peace you need.”
‘Ten Days’ excels on two fronts – when Fred and his collaborators dig up a more interesting take on the influence of love, and when the producer turns his sights to the dancefloor. In the former category, there’s ‘Fear Less’, a stunning turn from Sampha that takes us into a scene in a car, anxieties soothed by a partner “on the passenger side”. In the latter, there’s ‘Places To Be’, the biggest mover on the album, guided by features from Anderson. Paak and Chika, and a beat akin to that of André 3000 and Kelis’ ‘Millionaire’. “There’s something about that song that just makes you wanna get up and bust a motherfucking move,” a voice declares in the middle – an incredibly accurate assessment.
It would be easy for Gibson to take the attention and acclaim surrounding him and return on this album with by-the-numbers, floor-filling bangers. Instead, he pushes deeper and comes up with something that’s both poignant and fun in equal measure – a solid gold record that leans into the little moments and produces pure, emotional magic that will ensure many more “biggg mad crazy” times in Fred Again..’s future ahead.
During a 2008 interview, Prodigy of Mobb Deep was asked if he ever feared death. Mortality followed him in every lyric he delivered, and few artists could capture that deep chill you feel when survival becomes part of your everyday life. His response carried the same tough energy that defined him, shaped by the reality of Queensbridge: “Every day I wake up like, ‘This might be my last day, and I’m not scared of it.’ I’m never scared to bite my tongue about something, or to come out and speak about something. Like, I ain’t scared of death. What you gonna do to me?”
Nine years later, at only 42, he passed away in a way that felt both tragic and strangely ordinary. While on tour with Havoc in Las Vegas, he was hospitalized for complications tied to his lifelong struggle with sickle cell anemia. There, he accidentally choked while eating alone and died. (His family would later file a wrongful death lawsuit against the hospital.)
Havoc spent years mourning his brother and bandmate, unsure how to properly honor him through music. “You wanna do something to send your comrade off with a 21-gun salute…because he deserves that,” he said recently on the Bootleg Kev podcast. With help from longtime collaborator the Alchemist, Havoc pieced together Infinite, Mobb Deep’s ninth album and part of Mass Appeal’s Legend Has It series. It marks the first posthumous release in the collection, which always comes with its own challenges. Yet Infinite flows as smoothly as any project of its kind. For better and worse, it feels like an album the duo could’ve released after 2014’s somewhat forgettable The Infamous Mobb Deep, an update to their signature gritty sound with a few hints of modern polish.
On paper, it feels like everything has been rewound. Aside from a brief COVID reference and one cringey Havoc line about getting canceled for a joke about chromosomes, most of the lyrics are either locked in time (“Taj Mahal” references the old Trump casino) or so universal they could live anywhere. Instead of calling on a team of producers like they did for Infamous, Havoc handles 11 of the 15 tracks himself, with Alchemist revisiting the dirty, menacing textures he perfected on Murda Muzik and Infamy for the remaining four.
The strongest Havoc beats from Mobb Deep’s golden era twisted familiar sounds into something dangerous. That edge is still there on songs like “The M. The O. The B. The B.” and “Mr. Magik,” where the tension mixes with the quieter, stripped-down percussion style he used on Kanye’s The Life of Pablo. It gives the low-end even more power. Meanwhile, Alchemist falls back into the rugged rhythms that made his name — dusty drums and echoing samples. The shimmering haze of “Taj Mahal” feels like something from an old Street Sweepers mixtape, while “Score Points” and “My Era” would fit perfectly on one of his earlier collaborations with Prodigy.
Prodigy is present on every track, never halfway in. He raps at least one verse on each song and even takes on some of the hooks. His voice is as cold and sharp as ever (“RIP, you can’t son me/My pop’s dead,” he spits on “My Era”), even when his writing circles back to familiar themes. There are still small gaps here and there, but Havoc and Alchemist treat his vocals with care. What matters most is that the bond between Havoc and Prodigy still feels unbroken. They were never flashy lyricists or complex writers — their power came from directness, from how rooted they stayed in LeFrak City no matter how far their fame reached. “Mr. Magik” gets closest to that old-school Mobb Deep feel, especially when they pass the mic back and forth, going at rivals, dodging CIA agents, and spending nights with mistresses. The same goes for “Easy Bruh,” a song driven by drums, faint piano keys, sirens, and some of Prodigy’s sharpest lines on the album (“Niggas mad? Put a cape on ’em/Now they super mad” actually made me laugh out loud). At its best, Infinite feels effortless, Mobb Deep comfortable in their seasoned, world-weary selves.
Things drift off when the production stretches too far or leans toward trends. Some guest spots make perfect sense, like Big Noyd showing up on “The M. The O. The B. The B.” with his trademark nasal intensity, or Ghostface and Raekwon bringing color and life to “Clear Black Nights.” But the Clipse feature on “Look at Me” feels more trendy than meaningful, and Nas, another close ally, drops in with one of those standard Mass Appeal-style verses that sound recycled from his recent albums. “Down For You,” which flips Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” into a hard-hitting love track, is a welcome addition to Mobb Deep’s catalog of street romance. Still, it loses impact when it reappears later on, this time swapping Jorja Smith’s hook for one by H.E.R. I can understand the decision, the beat goes hard — but it’s hard to take Nas seriously when he’s rapping about keeping a side chick like Tony Soprano. It’s one of the few moments that feels forced, and because there are so few, they stand out more.
Posthumous rap albums in the last decade have often been tangled in questions of control and exploitation. Thankfully, Infinite avoids those traps. It doesn’t carry the awkward tension that surrounded Gang Starr’s One of The Best Yet, nor does it feel stitched together the way DMX’s Exodus did. It never feels like Havoc or anyone else is cashing in on Prodigy’s legacy. In fact, it’s moving to hear them side by side again, even when Prodigy’s words hit too close, meditating on death while “staring up at the cosmos” on “Pour The Henny,” or dodging enemies both real and imagined as he gambles in Atlantic City. Still, much of the album feels like a return to familiar ground, reworking echoes of their strongest years. There are no moments that reach the levels of The Infamous or Hell on Earth, but Infinite does succeed in giving one of hip-hop’s greatest duos one final, heartfelt ride.
