This is the song SEAN COMBS—fresh from being fired from UPTOWN RECORDS—played to CLIVE DAVIS to persuade Davis to give him a distribution deal for the fledgling BAD BOY RECORDS. It was the first single Bad Boy released, arriving a month before NOTORIOUS B.I.G.'s "JUICY." It was slow and weird and postmodern and obsessed with the JETSONS and BRUCE JENNER. It was a top 10 pop single and a GRAMMY nominee. It was the sound, or at least *a* sound, of the summer of 1994. This is the amazing remix that opens with Puff Daddy, two soda bottles and Biggie. "Killed the 90s with 1 song and 1 remix," M.I.A. tweeted Tuesday. And if you never heard anything by CRAIG MACK after that, you wouldn't be alone. Bad Boy promoted its first two artists jointly, as B.I.G. Mack, but Biggie became the big star in every way, and Mack never escaped that towering shadow. He disappeared into the mix. But indelible singles like "FLAVA IN YA EAR" never disappear. Mack was working on a comeback album with childhood friend ERICK SERMON when he died Monday. RIP... Hip-hop today is also mourning producer and DELICIOUS VINYL label founder MATT DIKE, who brought us TONE-LOC and YOUNG MC and was one of the production geniuses behind the BEASTIE BOYS' PAUL'S BOUTIQUE. A master of the crossover, in other words. He was raised a Jehovah's Witness, seduced into rock and roll by MOTT THE HOOPLE in the 1970s, and to say he lived a life would be a massive understatement. My favorite random factoid from his obituary on Delicious Vinyl's website: "In the late ‘70s... Matt DJed a party for the first time, repeatedly playing JOE JACKSON’s 'GOT THE TIME' at the request of a then-unknown teenage artist named JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT." I love so many things about that sentence I don't even know where to start. RIP... The new best use of subscription music services ever... Episode two of JEFF MILLS' radio series "The Outer Limits" can be heard here at 10 am ET today... One more RIP: 17-year-old DRAYLEN MASON, one of the victims of this week's bombings in AUSTIN, TEXAS. He was a high-school senior and the principal double bassist in both the AUSTIN YOUTH ORCHESTRA and AUSTIN SOUNDWAVES. He had been accepted to the BUTLER SCHOOL OF MUSIC at the UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS. Today's newsletter is dedicated to him, the 17 students gunned down at MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL and all the students who will walk out of school for 17 minutes this morning in their memory.