Chucky Thompson, the Grammy-nominated music producer behind some of R&B and hip-hop’s most memorable songs and who helped form Bad Boy Records with Sean “Puffy” Combs in the early 1990s, has died.
Carl E. Thompson was 53.
News of his death was first announced by producer Young Guru on Instagram, who called Thompson “my mentor, my big brother, the man who changed my life forever.”
The native of Washington, D.C., was a huge name behind the scenes of the music industry, quietly producing some of R&B and rap’s most popular hits throughout the 1990s.
Mary J. Blige’s 1994 album “My Life” was his first project at the fledgling record label and would ultimately earn him a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Album.
The same year he also produced The Notorious B.I.G.’s debut LP “Ready to Die.”
Over 30 years in the music business, Thompson collaborated with hit-making artists including Usher, TLC, Busta Rhymes, Nas, Ice Cube, New Edition and Juvenile, Total and Faith Evans.
In retrospect, Thompson and Comb’s partnership was like catching lightning in a bottle.
In a 2011 interview, Thompson revealed how he first met Combs soon after Puffy was let go from Uptown Records.
It was around this time that Thompson sent his demo to the rising mogul, and the two immediately hit it off. Soon Thompson was in as a member of Bad Boy’s in-house production team called the Hitmen, which cranked out dozens of R&B’s biggest chart toppers through the years.
Thompson was born in Washington, D.C. on July 12, 1968.
He started out his music career with a go-go band called the Soul Searchers alongside bandleader Chuck Brown, who died in 2012, according to Pitchfork.
Yahoo! News reported that Thompson had recently released a remix of “I See You,” a song by Real Housewives of Potomac star Candiace Dillard Bassett.
Numerous artists posted tributes to social media on Tuesday.
“Chucky and I was and will always be a musical match made in heaven,” Blige wrote on Instagram. “He was an angel sent to help me weather my storm.”
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