Heavy D dies at 44

The 44-year-old rap singer was taken to hospital with breathing problems, just hours after he wrote to his followers on Twitter, "BE INSPIRED!"

Paramedics arrived at Heavy D's Beverly Hills condo at around noon on Tuesday, after receiving a 911 call from a neighbour. The rapper was conscious and talking, but had collapsed after returning home from a shopping trip. "There doesn't appear to be any foul play," police lieutenant Mark Rosen told the New York Daily News. "We believe it was medically related." According to LA's KTLA News, Heavy was suffering from pneumonia after a recent trip from Europe. He was taken by ambulance to Cedars Sinai Medical Center, where he died at about 1pm. Autopsy results are forthcoming.

Heavy D, born May 24 1967, died November 8 2011

Heavy D's biggest hit was a lyrically-acrobatic reworking of the O'Jays' track Now That We Found Love – in which he describes himself, with typical charm and optimism, as "A strugglin', bubblin' overweight lover". He also made a significant contribution to the careers of successive generations of hip-hop superstars by helping the future mogul Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs to secure his first job, at the pioneering African-American record label Uptown.

Heavy D, whose moniker stemmed from his hefty frame, was born Dwight Arrington Myers in Mandeville, Jamaica, on May 24 1967. His parents moved to America in the early 1970s and by his late teens Myers was involved in the emerging rap culture of the outlying New York boroughs, leading a rap "crew" known as The Boyz.

In 1987 Heavy D & The Boyz was the first group signed to Andre Harrell's Uptown Records, where Sean Combs later began his career. "Heavy D is the person who gave me my first chance," Combs noted this week. "He believed when no one else did." Such benevolence was characteristic, and Heavy D helped nurture lesser-known talents too.

His early singles, Mr Big Stuff and The Overweight Lover's In The House, played to his physical appearance, while his album Big Tyme (1989) proved a breakthrough smash with four hit singles, including the comic Gyrlz, They Love Me. Its success helped Heavy D launch a solo career in 1990, when he appeared on Janet Jackson's single Alright, though he also continued to record with The Boyz.

That year, however, The Boyz member "Trouble" T Roy (born Troy Dixon) died aged 22. Dixon's death became the subject of the 1991 album Peaceful Journey, which featured Now That We Found Love and went platinum. Heavy D's ascent into superstardom seemed confirmed the same year when Michael Jackson featured the rapper on his 1991 hit Jam. But then positive messages and party anthems began to fall out of favour in hip-hop circles, and Heavy D's musical approach lost its commercial potency.

Despite this, the singer maintained his profile by branching out successfully into acting. He appeared in the off-Broadway production Riff Raff in 1997 and the films The Cider House Rules and Life (both 1999). He also became familiar to television viewers for his recurring role in the drama Boston Public.

Heavy D continued to release solo albums, and contributed to BB King's album of duets, Deuces Wild. But in 2008 he began to diversify away from rap, exploring the music of his birthplace with the reggae-tinged Vibes. By then he had been supplanted in hip-hop by a new generation of singers, whose songs celebrated a darker, more dangerous way of life than the "bubblin' overweight lover" ever had. Notorious BIG, his most obvious counterpart in this new rap firmament, was murdered in 1997. "I came to a point where I felt I had put the exclamation mark on my hip-hop career," said Heavy D.

To promote his last album, Love Opus, released in September this year, Heavy D recently undertook his first set of live appearances in 15 years, singing at a tribute concert to Michael Jackson and at a hip-hop awards ceremony in Los Angeles.

Heavy D collapsed outside his home in Beverly Hills and could not be resuscitated. A few hours earlier he had posted an upbeat message to fans: "Be inspired".