WALTERBORO, NC (CelebrityAccess) — Craig Mack, an early rapper who became one of the first artists to score a breakout hit for Sean Comb’s Bad Boy Records, died on Monday. He was 46.
The New York Daily News reported that the New York native died of heart failure at a hospital near his home in Walterboro, South Carolina, where he’d been living in recent years.
“God bless my friend. He was a good friend of mine,” Alvin Toney, who produced Mack’s debut album “Project: Funk Da World,” told the Daily News.
Born in Queens, Mack released his first single under the name MC EZ in 1988, but first gained widespread attention for his 1994 hit “Flava In Ya Ear” which he released under his own name. A remix of the track featured Notorious BIG, helping to launch that rapper’s career.
His debut album “Project: Funk Da World” (1994) peaked at #6 on the Billboard R&B chart and #21 on the Billboard 200 and he gained some traction with his sophomore album, 1997’s “Get Down” which climbed to #46 on the Billboard 200 and #17 on Billboard’s R&B charts.
However, Mack failed to achieve follow-up success and eventually disappeared from the music scene. In 2012, a video surfaced indicating he’d joined the Seventh Day Adventist Overcomer Ministry, and he experimented with some Christian-themed rap but a self-released album in 2017 “The Mack World Sessions” failed to chart.
No information was available about Mr. Mack’s family of funeral arrangements at the time of publication.
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