Craig Mack and The Notorious BIG were the first two artists signed to Diddy’s Bad Boy Entertainment, launching the label in a one-on-two move that helped define hip-hop in the 1990s.
However, despite their promising start to their careers, both artists ended prematurely. Biggie was murdered in 1997 and Craig Mack died of AIDS-related complications in 2018.
Now, Mike’s ex-wife, Roxanne Hill, is raising eyebrows with her explosive claim that his illness may not have been a random tragedy. In an interview with The Art of Conversation, Hill said she believed her ex-husband contracted HIV on purpose.
“Yes, I do. I do believe that,” she said when asked if she thought someone intentionally gave Mike the virus. Hill explained that Mack himself suspected foul play.
“Craig had a sense that this was something God had given him and not the way people typically get HIV,” she said.
She also remembers Mack warning a friend in South Carolina to “be careful because they’re going to let someone in with you and they’re going to poison you,” a statement he made before his diagnosis became public.
“Craig is a very heterosexual person,” Hill said. “He liked women. He liked the company of women. So when people said, ‘Oh, he’s gay,’ he wasn’t gay. Someone found him.”
She added that his illness came on suddenly and without any warning.
“It was like out of the blue,” she said. “You know, if their dad was an intravenous drug user and shared needles, they knew there was a chance he could get sick from it. But it just kind of happened out of the blue.”
Hill also said her children struggled to understand how their father became ill.
“They’ll ask, ‘How was it?'” she said. “If it was drugs, there would be a clear path. But there’s no explanation.”
She noted that she had some theories about what happened, but couldn’t share them. “I have some guesses,” she said. “But I’m not free to discuss these issues now because my lawyer told me not to talk about it.”
After Craig Mack died, Hill said she spoke with the South Carolina coroner.
According to her, the coroner told her that Mike had likely been living with the virus for a decade or more without receiving treatment. The timeline, she said, suggests he contracted the disease while still living in New York.
“If you do the math, you’ll find that he was back in New York when he got sick,” she said. “How it happened remains unclear. There has been speculation but I cannot discuss that now as I have been advised not to by my lawyers. What I can say is that it gave the strong impression that something was done to him.”
Craig Mack, best known for his 1994 hit “Flava in Ya Ear,” left the spotlight in the late ’90s, eventually joining a religious commune in South Carolina.
He died on March 12, 2018. On March 9, 1997, his Bad Boy label mate Notorious BIG was killed in a drive-by shooting.
Mike died three days after the 21st anniversary of Biggie’s death, a full 21 years and three days apart.
