Goodbye to Mister Cee, DJ and hip hop producer. He was 57 years old

Calvin LeBrun, the New York radio DJ better known as Mister Ceeis dead, he reports hip-hop station Hot 97 , citing his family. The cause of death was not revealed. Mister Cee he was 57 years old.

Mister Cee grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn and, in 1988, took part in the debut album of one of the New York borough's brightest young stars, Big Daddy Kane. Cee was the DJ on “Long Live the Kane” and is the subject of the album's penultimate track, “Mister Cee's Master Plan.” Cee continued his work with Kane into the early '90s, earning credits on 1989's “It's a Big Daddy Thing,” 1990's “Taste of Chocolate,” 1991's “Prince of Darkness” and 1991's “Looks Like a Job For …” of 1993.

Cee is also often credited with discovering another pillar of Brooklyn hip-hop, the Notorious BIG. “I knew he was cool,” Cee recalled of the late rapper last year. “I didn't think he would become what he was before he died. All I did at that moment was try to get anyone, everyone to listen to him.” Ultimately, Mister Cee served as executive producer on Notorious B.I.G.'s iconic 1994 debut, “Ready to Die”.

In addition to his work as a producer, Mister Cee spent decades as a DJ on the popular New York hip-hop radio station Hot 97 (WQHT-FM, 97.1). Writing about the DJ in 2013, Jon Caramanica of the New York Times called Cee “the station's institutional memory and living link to history” and also “its only reliable purveyor of hip-hop classics.”

Despite his success, Mister Cee left Hot 97 in 2013 after several arrests for soliciting transgender people. The DJ used his resignation as an opportunity to speak openly about his sexuality in an interview with Ebro Darden, an interview that writer and journalist Jody Rosen called “a watershed moment for hip-hop culture, which has slowly abandoned his long-standing homophobia.” “What you did today in hip-hop is monumental,” Darden told Mister Cee on the air. “You saved people's lives today in a real way.”

Mister Cee returned to Hot 97, but resigned again in 2014, telling the New York Times that he didn't agree with the musical direction the station was headed. Lui has continued to broadcast and post his mixes online.

“We lost the iconic Mister Cee,” Hot 97 DJ Peter Rosenberg posted on X. “Heard this yesterday and I'm in complete shock. He was a dear friend to us all, a wonderful man and one of the most important and impactful DJs of all time. I love you, Cee.”