Erick Morillo, the internationally renowned DJ and music producer best known for his 1994 hit “I Like to Move It,” was found dead Tuesday morning in the bedroom of his Miami Beach home. He was 49.
Miami Beach Police Department spokesperson Ernesto Rodriguez said officers responded to a 911 call from Morillo's home at 10:42 a.m.
An investigation into the cause of Morillo's death is underway but the Miami Herald cited a law enforcement source as saying he may have died of a drug overdose.
In 2016, Morillo told Miami New Times he had gone to rehab three times for ketamine and alcohol. "I almost lost my life in Miami," he said, "but I got it back."
At the International Music Summit in 2016, Morillo said he turned to drugs because his ego suffered a blow when younger DJs started eclipsing him. "I started dabbling on a daily basis … I was hiding it," he recalled. "The partying was by myself in my bedroom because I didn’t want anybody to see it. I’m such a control freak, I would never want anybody to see me f**ked up.”
Last month, Morillo was charged with sexual assault after a woman alleged she was raped inside his Miami Beach home last December. He had a court hearing scheduled for Friday.
Morillo was born in New York City but spent grew up in Cartagena, Colombia and New Jersey (in 2012, Union City named a block of the street where he lived “Erick Morillo Way”)
The New York native has worked in the house music scene for three decades. Under the name Reel 2 Real, he released “I Like to Move It," (featuring vocals by Mark Quashie) which became a No. 1 hit in Canada and several other markets around the world. The song was given new life beginning in 2005 thanks to the Madagascar movie franchise.