Craig Mack and The Notorious B.I.G. were the first two artists signed to Diddy’s Bad Boy Entertainment, launching the label with a one-two punch that helped define 1990s Hip-Hop.
But while their careers began with promise, both artists met untimely ends. Biggie was murdered in 1997 and Craig Mack died from AIDS-related complications in 2018.
Now, Mack’s ex-wife, Roxanne Hill, is raising eyebrows with explosive claims that his illness may not have been a random tragedy. During a sit-down with The Art of Dialogue, Hill said she believes her former husband was deliberately infected with AIDS.
“Yes, I do. I do believe that,” she said when asked if she thought someone intentionally gave Mack the virus. Hill explained that Mack himself suspected foul play.
“Craig had a feeling that it was something given to him, not in I guess the way people usually contract AIDS,” she said.
She also recalled Mack warning a friend in South Carolina to “be careful because they will put someone with you and they’ll poison you,” a statement he made before his diagnosis became public.
“Craig was a very heterosexual man,” Hill said. “He liked women. He liked the company of women. So when people were saying, ‘oh, he was gay,’ he wasn’t gay. Someone got to him.”
She added that his illness appeared suddenly and without warning.
“It was just like out of the blue,” she said. “You know, if their father had been an intravenous drug user, sharing needles, they would know the probability of him getting sick from that. But this was just like out of the blue.”
Hill also said her children have struggled to understand how their father became sick.
“They’re like, ‘How?’” she said. “If it had been drugs, there would be a clear path. But there’s no explanation.”
She noted that she has theories about what happened but is unable to share them. “I have speculations,” she said. “But I’m not at liberty to discuss those right now due to my attorneys telling me not to talk about it.”
After Craig Mack’s death, Hill said she spoke with the coroner in South Carolina.
According to her, the coroner told her that Mack had likely been living with the virus for a decade or more without receiving treatment. That timeline, she said, suggests he contracted the illness while still living in New York.
“When you do the math, that timeline places him back in New York when he became ill,” she said. “How it happened remains unclear. There has been speculation, but I cannot discuss that now because my attorneys advised me not to. What I can say is that it leaves the strong impression that something was done to him.”
Craig Mack, known for his 1994 hit “Flava in Ya Ear,” left the spotlight in the late ’90s and eventually joined a religious commune in South Carolina.
He died on March 12, 2018. The Notorious B.I.G., his Bad Boy labelmate, was killed in a drive-by shooting on March 9, 1997.
Mack died just three days after the 21st anniversary of Biggie’s death—exactly 21 years and 3 days apart.
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