Mister Cee, New York Radio DJ and Notorious B.I.G. Producer, Dies at 57

Calvin LeBrun, the New York radio DJ finest generally known as Mister Cee, has died, the hip-hop station Hot 97 studies, citing his household. A reason behind demise has not been revealed. Mister Cee was 57 years outdated.

Mister Cee grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and, in 1988, he took half within the debut album from one of many New York neighborhood’s brightest younger stars, Huge Daddy Kane. Cee was the DJ on Lengthy Stay the Kane, and he’s the topic of the album’s penultimate observe, “Mister Cee’s Master Plan.” Cee continued his work with Kane by the early Nineties, incomes credit on 1989’s It’s a Huge Daddy Factor, 1990’s Style of Chocolate, 1991’s Prince of Darkness, and 1993’s Seems to be Like a Job For….

Cee can be typically credited with discovering one other pillar of Brooklyn hip-hop, the Infamous B.I.G. “I knew he was dope,” Cee recalled of the late legend final yr. “I didn’t suppose he would turn out to be what he would earlier than passing away. All I did on the time was attempt to get anyone and everyone to hearken to him. Huge Daddy Kane, Masta Ace, I might attempt to power Biggie down their throat such as you gotta hear this man. Had we had the wherewithal we do now as grown males, me and Masta Ace may have put Biggie out or me and Kane.” Ultimately, Mister Cee served as an govt producers on the Infamous B.I.G.’s iconic 1994 debut, Ready to Die.

Past his work as a producer, Mister Cee spent many years as a DJ on New York’s standard hip-hop radio station Scorching 97 (WQHT-FM, 97.1). Writing concerning the DJ in 2013, The New York Instances’ Jon Caramanica called Cee “the station’s institutional reminiscence and its residing hyperlink to historical past, its one dependable purveyor of hip-hop classics.” Cee was admired a lot for his work with the station that fellow Brooklyn luminary Jay-Z shouted out him and Funkmaster Flex on 2009’s “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)”: “I made this only for Flex and Mister Cee.”

Regardless of his success, Mister Cee left Hot 97 in 2013 after a number of arrests for soliciting oral intercourse from transgender prostitutes. The DJ used his resignation as a chance to speak openly about his sexuality in an interview with Ebro Darden that Jody Rosen called “a watershed second for hip-hop tradition, which has slowly been disposing of its long-standing homophobia.”