Black Rain Entertainment, the company co-owned by the late Lord Infamous, has issued a statement regarding his death.

“Ricky Dunigan, professionally known as ‘Lord Infamous,’ died Friday, December 20, 2013 from a heart attack,” the statement says. “He was 40 years old. Dunigan was a founding member of the Memphis rap group Three 6 Mafia and had a successful solo career. In 2006, he and longtime friend, Memphis rapper II Tone, founded the label Black Rain Entertainment. Dunigan’s family is grateful for all the condolences and prayers, and would like to request privacy in their time of grief. For more, visit www.officialblackrainent.com.”

Along with Juicy J and DJ Paul, Lord Infamous appeared on Three 6 Mafia’s early projects. He released his debut solo effort, Lord Of Terror, in 1994, which preceded the group’s breakthrough independent release, 1995’s Mystic Stylez. He was the younger half-brother of DJ Paul and also participated in creating Da Mafia 6ix’s 6ix Commandments,which was released last month.

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DJ Paul said that Lord Infamous was pleased with the direction his life was taking. “He was happy about this new album, the new project, the new mixtape he was happy about that and how everything was going and we finally shot the ‘Where’s The Bud’ video, and he was happy about all that and was in the process of getting his life together,” DJ Paul said during an exclusive interview with HipHopDX Saturday (December 21). “He was going [December 21] to get his new place, his new crib. He was going to get that [yesterday], and he was just happy about getting his life together. He told his mom and his girl last week he wanted to clear anything with anybody he made mad in his life and stuff like that, so I was kind of prepared for something like this, but when you get to talking about things like this you can talk things into existence. Tupac always rapped about death around the corner. You can talk things into existence, that why he started to talk about this and I was like, ‘I don’t want to hear this.’ But the reason why he was talking like that was because he was saying that the doctor was telling him he probably had some more kidney problems that were coming back up from that last stroke, so he thought he was going to have kidney problems. I don’t know if the doctors told him that or not, but that was what he was telling me. He was kind of looking forward to it, but he was kind of preparing for it just by the way he was talking about different stuff.”

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