Andre Harrell, the music executive who founded the influential Uptown Records, has died at the age of 59.
DJ D-Nice first announced during his weekly Club Quarantine series Friday that Harrell died, but no cause of death was provided, Variety reports.
The Bronx-born Harrell entered the music business as one-half of the hip-hop duo Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. The group scored some minor hits (including “Genius Rap“) before Harrell began exploring the business side of music.
In 1983, Harrell began working under Russell Simmons and that music mogul’s Def Jam Records. Three years later, Harrell founded his own label, Uptown Records.
“So many can say they are successful because Andre Harrell gave them their start,” Simmons wrote in a tribute following news of Harrell’s death Friday. “He was so beloved because he made his living uplifting others… We celebrate him in his passing because we were so blessed for his presence… He gave everything he had.”
Why Andre 😢😢😢 My heart is breaking and I can’t stop crying. He was an amazing friend and I will miss him forever. 😢
— Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) May 9, 2020
Under Harrell’s stewardship, Uptown Records helped launch the careers of Heavy D and the Boyz, Guy (featuring producer Teddy Riley), Jodeci, Al B. Sure and Mary J. Blige, who as a teenager signed with Harrell’s label. In 1992, Uptown partnered with MCA on a multimedia deal that allowed Harrell to produce films, TV shows and movie soundtracks, including the 1991 comedy Strictly Business and TV series New York Undercover.
“He gave you the best soundtracks of your life man and you didn’t even know it. We never gave him his flowers. He redefined the party,” Questlove wrote of Harrell Friday. “Def Jam was the artform. Bad Boy was the attitude. Death Row was the muscle. But without even knowing it? Uptown was ALWAYS the party.”
Harrell’s onetime intern Sean “Puffy” Combs would later step into an A&R role at Uptown during the label’s most successful years in the early Nineties. However, tensions rose between Harrell and Combs and the latter, after being fired from Uptown, quickly formed Bad Boy Records, taking the recently discovered the Notorious B.I.G. with him.
Combs’ exit signaled Uptown’s decline, and in 1995, Harrell himself would leave the label he founded to become CEO of Motown Records, although that stint was short-lived. Two decade later, Combs would hire his old boss Harrell to serve as vice chairman of the rapper/producer’s Revolt music network.
Earlier this year, BET announced plans for a miniseries based on Uptown Records’ rise, with Harrell in a producer role. In a statement at the time, Harrell said the miniseries would “share my story, the rise of Uptown Records and successful black entrepreneurship, and the management and cultivation of some of the most iconic artists to come out of the late ’80s and ’90s hip-hop, R&B and soul music era.”