M.M. Keeravani today is being hailed as one of the greatest music composers of Tollywood, but he earned his early spurs in K. Balachander's 1991 Tamil movie, 'Azhagan' (Handsome), starring Mammootty and Bhanupriya. In the credit lines, he was known as Maragathamani.
In the same year, Keeravani, using the same identity, composed the music for celebrated filmmaker I.V. Sasi's hit movie 'Neelagiri', also starring Mammooty. And in the year that followed, he gave the music for 'Soorya Manasam', the Sowcar Janaki-Mammootty film where the latter plays a mentally challenged man.
In the meantime, he continued with Telugu and Tamil films, venturing onto Kannada, where he did not change his name, as he did yet again, this time to M.M. Kreem, when he scored the music for 'Criminal', Mahesh Bhatt's 1995 Telugu-Hindi bilingual thriller based on 'The Fugitive' and starring Nagarjuna, Ramya Krishna and Manisha Koirala.
Although he went on to give music to a number of Kannada films, his last Malayalam production was 'Devaraagan' (1996), which also marked Sridevi's last appearance in a Mollywood movie.