Hip-hop world mourns rapper Craig Mack, who died at 46

Craig Mack, known for first putting Sean “Diddy” Combs’s Bad Boy record label on the map with his iconic single “Flava In Ya Ear,” died Monday at the age of 46.

“God bless my friend,” his producer Alvin Toney told the New York Daily News, which first reported the news of Mack’s death of heart failure.

Mack died around 9 p.m. Monday in Walterboro, South Carolina, Colleton County coroner Richard Harvey told the Associated Press.

The New York rapper’s summer 1994 single became an instant hit and turned into a must-play classic and hip-hop anthem.

The subsequent remix included a breakout guest verse from Notorious B.I.G., whose “Ready to Die” album dropped a week before Mack’s fulllength debut, “Project: Funk da World.” LL Cool J, who appeared on the popular “Flava In Ya Ear” remix, wrote a tribute on Twitter.

Mack was signed to Bad Boy after Diddy heard him freestyle outside of a Manhattan club.

“Craig is hip-hop’s George Clinton, because his stuff is really off the wall,” Diddy told the New York Times in 1995. “He does what’s from his heart, which is where it starts for him. But his energy comes from somewhere else.”

The rapper ended up leaving Bad Boy and releasing his second album, “Operation: Get Down,” in 1997, before departing from the music industry altogether to devote his life to religion.

Word of his death spread across the hip-hop world Tuesday, which in recent years has mourned the early passing of other pioneers: Prodigy of Mobb Deep, who died in June at 42 from sickle cell anemia-related complications, and Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest, who died in 2016 at 45 from complications of diabetes.