R.I.P. Chris Lighty

Chris Lighty, 2007. Photo: Jim Cooper/Associated Press

Chris Lighty, founder of Violator Management, has died. NY Daily News reports he "died Thursday morning after he shot himself during an argument with his ex-wife inside his Bronx apartment, sources told the Daily News.

"Lighty, 44 — a longtime manager of 50 Cent, Diddy, Ja Rule and Mariah Carey — put a gun to his head and fired after a spat with his former wife, Veronica, inside the South Riverdale apartment about 11:30 a.m., police sources said.

"Law enforcement sources said Lighty — who divorced his wife last year — may have been dealing with financial struggles, including owing about $5 million to the IRS..."

New York Times reports that "In one of his most notable deals, Mr. Lighty negotiated a partnership in 2004 between 50 Cent and the beverage company Glacéau that gave the rapper a stake in the company and his own flavor of its Vitaminwater drink. When Coca-Cola bought Glacéau three years later for over $4 billion, 50 Cent’s take was estimated to be worth up to $100 million..."

Here are 10 things you probably didn’t know about Chris Lighty courtesy of The Big Payback by Dan Charnas.

New York Times: He Took Hip-Hop From Gritty to Global...excerpt... "Acquiring wealth was an obvious strategy against irrelevance or being overlooked. So the goal was to build rappers — and their brands — from the streets up, without ever sacrificing their connections to their background. Scale big and don’t dilute: those were the rules. That meant endorsement deals, vanity clothing lines and more, anything that could bear the weight of a rapper’s image, anything that could extend a reach.

So when Mr. Lighty partnered some of his clients with Sprite, the results were some of the most viscerally hip-hop ads of the day. Or even later, when he helped negotiate 50 Cent’s stake in Glaceau, the company that makes Vitaminwater, it was with an eye toward not just lending his client’s credibility but also letting the client do so on his own terms. Mr. Lighty didn’t change his artists; he encouraged them to infiltrate."