In an interview on CTRL, ALT, D-Stroy with host D-Stroy, Havoc of Mobb Deep shared a wild memory from his early production days: the time he lost a beat that Puff Daddy had already paid for.
“I made the beat for Puff, couldn’t find the reel, and had to go tell him,” Havoc said. “He was like, ‘Where’s the beat I paid for, B?’” Back in the era of analog reels, there were no backups or bounce files—losing one meant starting over from scratch. “I had to go in and make a new one,” he admitted. “It was crazy.”
Havoc never mentioned which track it was, and he’s not credited on No Way Out, so the mystery remains. But whatever the beat was, it mattered enough for Puff to press him—and for Havoc to stay up all night recreating it from memory.
Years later, the original reel resurfaced online—ironically tied back to one of Havoc’s own accounts.
The anecdote speaks to a generation of hip-hop production built on urgency, hunger, and trial-by-fire learning. Havoc didn’t come up with label infrastructure—he came up grinding through late nights in Queensbridge and beat sessions in Hempstead, borrowing gear and teaching himself the craft on the fly.
Much of his early gear and vinyl is long gone. That lost beat reel is just one of many things Havoc wishes he still had. But if there’s a lesson in it, it’s this: the wins don’t always come clean. “You fail, fail, fail—then you win,” he said.
