Chucky Thompson – the hip-hop, R&B, and pop producer best known for his work with Bad Boy Records – has died, AllHipHop and Billboard report. He was 53 years old. As a member of Bad Boy’s in-house production team, the Hitmen, he was responsible for some of the biggest hits in 90s hip-hop and R&B, including “Big Poppa” by Notorious BIG and “You Used to Love Me” by Faith Evans. The producer Young Guru first shared the news of Thompson’s death on social media before Thompson’s publicist Tamar Juda also confirmed the news to Pitchfork.
“I have a heavy heart to confirm Chucky Thompson’s death,” said Judah. “Everyone around them knows how generous they have been with their energy, creativity and love. Both the music industry and the world have lost a titan. “
Thompson was born on July 12, 1968 in Washington, DC. He played one of his first appearances in Chuck Brown’s go-go band The Soul Searchers before meeting Sean “Puffy” Combs, who had just been fired from Uptown Records in the process of founding his own label, Bad Boy Records. At 24, Combs asked him to produce a track for My Life, the follow-up to Mary J. Blige’s debut LP What’s the 411 ?; Blige was so impressed that she asked him to have the entire LP produced, for which he received a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Album.
For nearly three decades in the industry, he has raised composer and production credits with greats like Usher, New Edition, TLC, Jennifer Lopez, SWV, Color Me Badd, Mya, and others. But his most sustained hit came from outside the bad boy family with Nas’ “One Mic”, from the Queensbridge rapper’s 2001 comeback LP Stillmatic.
