The same year as appearing in The Source, Prodigy made an uncredited guest appearance on the track "Too Young" by Hi-Five, which appeared on the Boyz n the Hood soundtrack of all places. An interview Mobb Deep did with Billboard last year sheds some further light on their early years. It appears that their Unsigned Hype appearance did little for them, as they had to stay sending out demos to labels that they found after looking on the back of hip hop albums. An interesting part is that the two met with Sean Combs, who was most likely still just an intern at Uptown Records and a year shy of founding Bad Boy, and he recommended that they change their name because that was the only thing he didn't like about them. Their new name, created while "chillin' around at Def Jam", was Mobb Deep.
Mobb Deep's persistence in sending out demos finally got them somewhere when they signed to 4th & B'way in 1992. The following year, they released their debut album Juvenile Hell. The two must have had some hype in their early days because it features production work from DJ Premier and Large Professor, with the latter producing a song and then the former remixing it on another track (LP claims in an interview with Complex that his version was the original, but label executives thought Premier had a stronger track so they titled LP's version as a remix on the album). The rest of the album was produced by the group themselves, The Bomb Squad affiliates Paul Shabazz and Kerwin Young, and Dale Hogan and Keith Spencer (who were previously a production duo for Kool Moe Dee but have their last production credits on Juvenile Hell). Though having two all-star producers and two all-star affiliated producers behind them, Juvenile Hell was far from successful and failed to chart. It did however spawn the mildly successful "Hit It from the Back", which is undoubtedly the finest track on the album. Listening to the album, it doesn't sound like there's anything particularly wrong with the album, but there's nothing really special about it either which is most likely the reason why it remains their least successful album commercially. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if there are people who don't remember it as their debut and instead think their sophomore is.
Still aged in their late teens, Mobb Deep left 4th & B'way, signed with Loud and returned to the studios in early 1994 for work on their next album. This time they kept the production completely inhouse with the exception of three tracks by Q-Tip (credited as The Abstract), and dropped The Infamous in 1995. And that's where my early Mobb Deep summary ends, because this is the album that launched Mobb Deep into a position where they were one of the leading hip hop groups of the rest of the 1990s and remain as one of the most influential rap acts ever.
Though the hype may not have been big after their first appearance, the Poetical Prophets stayed persistent, and look where they are now with two definite classic albums under their belt and armed with the general consensus they are one of the best hip hop duos ever. A lot of this may have been due to the name change.
Discography (pre-1995)
1991: "Too Young" - Hi-Five (featuring Prodigy)
1993: Juvenile Hell - Mobb Deep
Bonus: Mobb Deep demos from 1992-1994 of mainly The Infamous tracks (one from Juvenile Hell)
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