Looks like the show comes on tonight so I won’t give too much detail and spoil it for you.
KCheck out TV One’s site for show timesThe Fat Boys started off as the Disco 3 with members: Mark Morales a. k. a.
“Prince Markie Dee,” Damon Wimbley a. k. a. “Kool Rock-Ski” and Darren Robinson a. k. a. “Buff Love” a. k. a.
“The Human Beat Box” They all grew up in Brooklyn and once Mark and Damon heard Buff’s Beat Box skills, along with their own ability to rap, success was inevitable. While the group’s success continued to sour album after album, manager Charlie Stettler was a Swiss national who’d embraced hip-hop culture but he was not aware of Hip-Hop’s “street cred” rules. He encouraged the rapprs to collaborate with famed Rock and Roll group The Beach Boys.
Nothing could have taken them further away from their Black roots and they say their audience start to change. At one time it was filled with all black people now it was 50/50 (black AND whites). They didn’t have a problem with that but at the time they failed to consider instead of getting more fans overall, they were losing their core black audience whom otherwise didn’t relate to The Beach Boys and their smash hits from decades before.
To make matter’s worse the video for the song was almost all white excusing The Fat Boys, around the same time, the group took their new image (The hip-hop music version of The Three Stooges) a bit further by staring in Disorderlies a movie about 3 guys working as orderlies in an old folks home . It too was successful but at what cost? An on stage incident prompted by Prince Markie Dee going off on fans ended his tenure with the group and was said to be so vile, he was fired that night.
The remaining members were immediately dropped by Polydor. Buff who was physically the largest member of the group and who was the main attraction because of his, at the time unique, beat box skills was devastated. What started off as a gimmick and made them successful also ended up destroying them.
He was not able to put the pieces back together after sitting in the house for months after being rejected by the label the end result was his ballooning to 450 pounds. Prince Markie Dee, who was now a very successful producer producing and writing many of Mary J Blige’s early hits and at least a few of his own as Prince Marie Dee and The Soul Convention, tried to reform the group since he now had Carte Blanche after so many hits at Sony and other labels. Sony was all for the revised version of The Fat Boys but Buff’s heart wasn’t in it.
People in the video speculate he didn’t want to be seen at that size and he felt insecure about the amount of weight he had gained. He had basically becoming a hermit in his own basement working on music and rarely ever leaving the house. He had a fatal heart attack and died on December 10, 1995.
People in the house were unable to lift or revive him. Prince Markie Dee is now a radio Radio DJ in Florida at WMIB. Kool Rock has dropped more than half his weight is unrecognizable until he tells you who he is.
