Mobb Deep was an American hip hop and music production duo from New York City. The duo consisted of rappers Prodigy and Havoc. They are considered to be among the principal progenitors of hardcore East Coast hip hop and hip hop in the mid-1990s. Mobb Deep became one of the most successful rap duos of all time, having sold over three million records. Their best-known albums are The Infamous (1995), Hell on Earth (1996) and Murda Muzik (1999), and their most successful singles were "Shook Ones (Part II)" and "Survival of the Fittest." They were known for their dark and hardcore delivery. The duo disbanded in 2012, but reunited the following year. Prodigy died in June 2017. Havoc is currently working on a new Mobb Deep album. Biography Early career Havoc and Prodigy met while both were students at the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan—a school that produced creatives like Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, Amy Heckerling, Lee Quiñones, and Fab Five Freddy. In 1991, they became a duo that went by the name Poetical Prophets. The name Poetical Prophets was a testament to Prodigy, then Lord-T (The Golden Child), and Havoc's gravitation toward New York conscious hip-hop. The duo began making a demo tape and employed a guerilla marketing approach to promote themselves. They would find the addresses of record label headquarters on the back of albums, bring a cassette player, and ask passing artists to listen to their music. The only artist who stopped to hear their music was Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest; Prodigy recalled, "[Q-Tip] introduced us to Chris Lighty that day and a bunch of people in the Rush Associated Labels in the Def Jam office—that's how we met everybody." Shortly thereafter, Prodigy signed a solo demo deal with Jive Records and had an uncredited feature on the song "Too Young" by Hi-Five, which appeared on the Boyz n the Hood soundtrack. Jive decided not to sign Poetical Prophets as a duo. However, they were featured in Matty C's July 1991 "Unsigned Hype" column in The Source, which helped promote their demo Flavor for the Nonbelievers. The Source dubbed Poetical Prophets a "dynamic duo ... that are fast making a big name for themselves in talent shows and radio stations in the New York area." The following year, the duo changed their name from Poetical Prophets to "Mobb Deep," in part based