Andre Harrell has died, as The New York Times reports. The influential hip-hop and R&B music executive passed following a battle with heart conditions, according to ex-wife Wendy Credle. He was 59 years old.
Born and raised in the Bronx, Harrell got his start as an artist before he ever pivoted to the business side of music, performing in the group Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde when he was 16. The duo found success with several singles, including “Genius Rap,” which famously sampled the Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love.” After meeting Russell Simmons in 1983, Harrell joined the rap mogul’s Rush Management company, rising in the ranks to eventually become vice president and general manager.
In 1986, Harrell departed Rush to launch his own record label, Uptown Records. There, he discovered and signed acts including the new jack swing group Guy (featuring Teddy Riley), Jodeci, Heavy D and the Boyz, and a young Mary J. Blige. It was also at Uptown that he came across Sean Combs, who began his career as an A&R at Uptown. In 1993, shortly after Diddy discovered and signed the Notorious B.I.G., Harrell fired Combs from the company, which led the entrepreneur to form Bad Boy Records, bringing Biggie along with him. (“I fired Puff only to make him rich,” Harrell said in the Bad Boy documentary Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story. The two eventually reconciled, with the former mentor serving as vice chairman of Diddy’s Revolt TV beginning in 2013.)
Harrell became a television and film producer in the 1990s, executive-producing the police drama New York Undercover and the comedy film Strictly Business, among others. He left Uptown to begin a brief stint as the head of Motown Records in the mid-90s, and most recently was developing a scripted miniseries for BET based on the founding and development of Uptown Records, which was previously set to air later this year.