Released from prison just about a month ago, Mobb Deep’s Prodigy serves up something for the fans in the form of The Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson EP, a free release presented by Complex Magazine. Built around clips from the 1997 film Hoodlum (of which Mobb Deep lent the title track), P loosely takes on the roll played by Laurence Fishburne.

While fans have been clamoring for a Mobb Deep reunion LP, this EP merely whets the appetite even more, as it doesn’t quite deliver like P’s previous solo works. You won’t find tracks of a “Keep It Thoro” magnitude, as he is obviously saving stuff of that caliber for bigger releases. Alchemist does lend beats to this on both “The One and Only” and “For One Night Only”, but neither compare to their previous collaborations, or even the tracks heard recently on the Covert Coup EP with Curren$y.

Sid Roams produces most of this EP, lending it’s two strongest tracks. “Black Devil” samples classic doo-wop, transforming it into a backdrop for P’s rant about wolves in sheep’s clothing, making some surprising admissions about race relations in the pen. Also standing out is “Go Off”, which ironically builds a hook off the idea that “Mobb Deep fell off…”. While this EP isn’t the strongest material from P or the M-O-B-B, that argument is still up in the air.

Still, one can’t be mad at P for getting on his grind and releasing a free EP for the fans who’ve missed him for so long. Let’s just hope when that next official album comes – whether it be solo or with Havoc – it delivers on the promise.