Kool Rock-Ski stood alone on a Brooklyn street that now bears his group’s name, a bittersweet moment for the last surviving member of Hip-Hop’s most entertaining trio, The Fat Boys.
The Fat Boys received a street co-naming ceremony on August 22, 2026, transforming Schenck Avenue in East New York into Fat Boys Avenue to honour the neighbourhood where the group first emerged in the early 1980s. What started as the Disco 3 became a cultural force that brought rap to mainstream audiences through films, crossover hits, and an infectious energy that nobody else could replicate.
The group’s rise through the 1980s was meteoric and multi-faceted. They starred in three feature films that introduced Hip-Hop to audiences who’d never heard a beatbox before: “Krush Groove” in 1985, “Knights of the City” in 1986, and their own feature film “Disorderlies” in 1987.
Buff Love, the human beatbox whose vocal percussion became the group’s signature sound, died on December 10, 1995, from a heart attack at just 28 years old. He’d been battling the flu and dealing with lymph edema, complications that compounded his health struggles. Prince Markie Dee, the group’s charismatic frontman, passed away on February 18, 2021, at age 52 from congestive heart failure, leaving only Kool Rock-Ski to witness this recognition. Kool Rock-Ski credited the man who shaped their entire approach to the craft.