Hip-Hop Mogul Irv Gotti Dies at 54
Irv Gotti, the music executive who co-founded Murder Inc. Records with his brother and helped build a hip-hop empire, has died at 54.
Def Jam Recordings, which was the parent label of Murder Inc. when it started in 1998, confirmed his death in a statement late Wednesday. The statement did not say how he died or when and where it happened.
Murder Inc., which Gotti started with his brother Chris, played a big role in launching the careers of rapper Ja Rule and R&B singer Ashanti. Their success helped make the label a major force in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“I’m important in America because of hip-hop,” Gotti said in The Murder Inc Story, a BET documentary series released in 2022. “I love hip-hop with a passion.”
Gotti was born Irving Domingo Lorenzo Jr. in Queens on June 26, 1970. His father was a taxi driver, and he was the youngest of eight kids. In the BET documentary, he said his siblings got him turntables and a mixer when he was a teenager, and he would spend hours practicing. By 15, he was already working as a DJ at parties.
As he got older, he started producing music and scouting talent. He was credited with helping discover future hip-hop stars like Jay-Z and DMX. He later became an A&R executive at Def Jam.
Gotti was also the executive producer of DMX’s 1998 debut album, It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot, which went straight to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. He also produced Ja Rule’s 1999 debut album, Venni Vetti Vecci, and worked on many hit albums by Ashanti in the early 2000s, solidifying his reputation as a top producer.
According to Billboard, Gotti was credited as a producer on 28 songs that made the Hot 100 chart.
In 2003, the FBI and police raided Murder Inc.’s New York offices as part of a federal investigation into whether the label was funded with drug money. Gotti was accused of laundering money for Kenneth McGriff, a convicted gang leader. To improve the label’s image, he later removed “Murder” from its name.
“They had everybody who loved me in corporate America, who felt I was a good guy, distance themselves from me,” he said after being found not guilty in 2005. “All while I was saying, ‘I didn’t do this, I didn’t do this,’ and they was like, ‘OK, we’ll wait and see.’”
