Prince Markie Dee, who as a member of the trio Fat Boys launched a few of hip-hop’s most commercially profitable albums of the 1980s and helped velocity the style’s absorption into popular culture, died on Thursday in Miami. He was 52.
His demise was confirmed by Rock the Bells, a SiriusXM station the place he had been a number. No trigger was given.
In the mid-1980s, Fat Boys have been amongst hip-hop’s greatest recognized teams; their 1987 album “Crushin’” went platinum and featured a collaboration with the Beach Boys, “Wipeout,” that was their largest hit, reaching No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. That 12 months, the group starred in a full-length comedy, “Disorderlies.”
Hip-hop was simply starting to change into accepted into the mainstream of American popular culture, and the group’s lighthearted rhymes, accessible dance routines and successful comedic method made them efficient ambassadors on hits together with “Jailhouse Rap,” “Stick ‘Em” and “Can You Feel It.” Some of their songs were about food and played on their image as harmless heavyweights.
Prince Markie Dee was born Mark Anthony Morales on Feb. 19, 1968. He formed the Disco 3 in the early 1980s along with Darren (the Human Beat Box) Robinson and Damon (Kool Rock Ski) Wimbley, friends from the East New York section of Brooklyn. They won a 1983 talent show at Radio City Music Hall, and were signed to a management contract by the show’s promoter, who instructed they modify their title to Fat Boys.
Their dimension turned their gimmick, their calling card and their accelerator. Their supervisor as soon as organized a promotional contest during which followers might guess the group’s collective weight.
The group launched seven full size albums; along with their platinum “Crushin’,” three went gold. In 1984, Fat Boys appeared on the Fresh Fest tour, the primary hip-hop area tour. Four years later, the group recorded a brand new model of “The Twist” with Chubby Checker. The trio additionally appeared within the movies “Krush Groove” and “Knights of the City” earlier than breaking apart within the early 1990s. Mr. Robinson died in 1995 at age 28 after he fell off a chair whereas rapping for buddies and misplaced consciousness.
Prince Markie Dee launched a pair of solo albums within the 1990s, the primary of which spawned the hit single “Typical Reasons (Swing My Way).” At the identical time, he was starting to work as a songwriter and producer for Uptown Records, collaborating with Father MC and Mary J. Blige. He helped write and produce Ms. Blige’s 1992 breakout hit “Real Love” and labored on her debut album, “What’s the 411?” He additionally labored on songs and remixes for Destiny’s Child, Mariah Carey and others.
Information about survivors was not instantly accessible.
Later in his profession, Mr. Morales was a radio character at WMIB-FM and WEDR-FM in Miami and on SiriusXM. But he was greatest recognized for being one of many Fat Boys when the group’s songs have been seemingly in all places.
“I would be walking and all of a sudden I would hear music ricochet off the walls,” the rapper Fat Joe wrote on Instagram, recalling how the Fat Boys’s beatboxing — “huh huh huh ha huh” — was “the first song they would play at the block party to summon you to appear.”
He known as Mr. Morales “a great guy, a legend and pioneer.”
