History: Mob Music

Background

In April 2011, during an interview with Complex, Too Short spoke about the album originally titled The History Channel, saying:

"We’re about halfway through recording the album, maybe a little bit further than that. If we don’t get it out on the market by the end of this year, it’ll be out by the top of next year. But we’re definitely going to drop some singles and videos this year. It’s a project that we wanted to do ten years ago. We both were Jive Records artists at the time, but Jive just did not want any parts of that album and we couldn’t figure out why."

He continued: "[This was around the time] Redman and Method Man [did Blackout!]. Jive just did not want that album to come out. I almost did an album with Lil Jon back when he was on TVT and Jive turned that down too. I don’t know what they had against collabos. I have no idea, but I look back on it and a lot of Jive artists have really never collaborated with each other. [Laughs.] It must be something they do over there. We would have made so much money together ten years ago. But we both waited it out. We waited until we both got out of Jive and we talked about it one day and said, ‘You know what? Now is a good damn time to do that album."

He also spoke about how many tracks would be on the album, saying: "We’re only doing 12 tracks, maybe. We’ll put some older songs that we did on there and make it a complete project. We’ll shoot a bunch of videos and drop it. But I just talked to 40 today and he was like, ‘Where we at with it?’ So the first songs we did, we got in the studio and did them all together. Now we’ve got the whole nucleus of the album. And we know which beats [we want] because we’ve picked all the tracks. And now we’re like, ‘You do your part in your studio, I’ll do mine in my studio, and you can send me an email." He continued: "All I can tell you is, all of the good product you got from E-40 with all the good product you got from Too $hort—it’s almost impossible for us to make a terrible album together. We’re both opinionated, so I damn sure am not co-signing a song that I think is wack. Whether I’m on it or not, I’m like, 'It’s wack! I don’t like it.' [Laughs.]"

He also spoke about the producers on the album, saying: "[For producers we got] Solomon and his sons. It’s mostly guys that we know who are West Coast producers. We’re trying to give the homies a good look. I guarantee you the beats are the shit. Definitely some features. We haven’t done the all-star lineup yet, but it’s definitely going to be some features. Wiz Khalifa is going to be on the album. That was the deal we made: I was going to do some work for him and he was going to do some work with us. That’s how we do it. It’s called the trade-off man."

On April 16, 2012, E-40 announced during an interview with Vlad TV that the album would be released in two pairs titled History: Function Music and History: Mob Music. On August 31, 2012, it was announced the albums would be released on November 6, 2012.

Critical response

History: Mob Music was met with generally favorable reviews from music critics. Jayson Greene of Pitchfork Media gave the album a 7.8 out of 10, saying "The production is split down the middle between the flashier, more carefree, hyphy-influenced production (E-40 calls it "function music") that has become the speciality of E-40's in-house production stable-- as usual, his son Droop-E contributes the most sonically inventive tracks-- and heavier, more minimal "mob music." An enormous chunk of California rap history is contained within these two styles, and Too $hort and Forty are their avatars. Listening to them egg each other on over the course of 34 songs is a pleasure, like staying up all night drinking with two disreputable uncles." Matt Jost of RapReviews gave the album a seven out of ten, saying "If you're feeling sarcastic, "History: Mob Music" does sound like an old, broken record. And it does cater to a constituency who may want it to sound exactly that way. Surely E-40 and Too $hort themselves don't mind it sounding the way it does, spreading nostalgia not just when Battlecat laces "Do You Remember" with feelgood funk and $hort reminisces: "I'm waitin' on the Mothership / on some Parliament/Funkadelic shit / When I was 10, it wasn't Too $hort pimpin' / I was at the Coliseum watchin' George Clinton." A considerable number of rap fans feel similarly about E-40 and Too $hort, and "History," especially the "Mob Music" half, is just for them."

Commercial performance

The album debuted at number 71 on the Billboard 200, with first-week sales of 5,700 copies in the United States.