The death of Three Six Mafia founding member Lord Infamous sent shockwaves through hip-hop overall, and the Memphis rap community in particular. His uncle and fellow Three Six Mafia bandmate/co-founder DJ Paul, spoke at-length to HipHopDX about the 40-year old’s unexpected death.
“He had a heart attack in his sleep,” Paul said. “His mother found him dead this morning. He had been dead, the doctors say, for about five hours. And she came home, he was sitting at the kitchen table with his head down on his arms. He had told his girlfriend that he was sleeping and he wanted to go to sleep. His girlfriend left and was like, ‘You going to be fine?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to be good.’ And she was like, ‘You sure?’ and he was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m positive, I just want to get some sleep.’ So he laid his head in his arms at the kitchen table and he went to sleep and then when his momma came home, he was sitting at the kitchen table passed away.”
Paul acknowledged that, despite Infamous suffering a heart attack and stroke in 2010, it’s too soon to know for certain if the two incidents are related to or contributed to his death.
“We don’t know yet,” Paul said. “It probably did. A lot of times people have heart attacks and a lot of people survive heart attacks and usually when they have that second, third one, it’s pretty much over with.”
“I think I was one of the last people to find out [about his death],” Paul said when asked about his immediate reaction. “I found out this morning around 9 o’clock. They had been calling me. His family had been calling me. I think I remember, when I look back, I turned my ringer off. I usually sleep with my ringer on because of situations like this because it was the wee hours of the morning is when I found out that my momma had passed… But for last night I had turned the ringer off for the first time so I could get some sleep ’cause I had a lot that I had to do today.
“When I woke up this morning, they was telling me that this had happened,” DJ Paul continued. “I didn’t believe it at first, they was like, ‘Ricky died,’ and I’m like, ‘Ricky who?’ and I was like, ‘Get the fuck outta here.’ I couldn’t believe it even though I was kind of preparing for it just because one day he was talking kind of crazy a couple of weeks ago and he was like, ‘I think I’ve got four months to live,’ and this and that and I was like, ‘No you don’t, get outta here.’ He was telling the same thing to his momma last week.”
