Rapper Brother Marquis, member of Miami rap group 2 Live Crew, has died aged 58.
“Brother Marquis of the 2 Live crew went to the upper room,” the group's statement read was posted on social media on Monday. The group's manager, DJ Debo, confirmed Marquis' death People.
Brother Marquis – as a member of 2 Live Crew along with Fresh Kid Ice, Mr. Mixx and Uncle Luke – made history with their blasphemous 1989 album As bad as they want to be. The album sold over a million copies and became the first album in history to be deemed legally obscene, after a federal judge ruled the year after its release that it was an “appeal to dirty thoughts and the loins, not the intellect and the mind .” The decision led to both the arrest of a record store owner who refused to stop selling the album and two members after live showthe Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the trial court's decision two years later.
The LP was the first by a Southern rap group to sell 1 million copies. Marquis first appeared on the group's LP It's Who We Are, which included the single “We Want Some Pussy”. The group was known for recording parodies of other artists, including Roy Orbison, who sued the group for reworking “Oh, Pretty Woman”. This case reached the Supreme Court over the unapproved sample and ultimately set the legal precedent that commercial parody qualifies as fair use.
After the group broke up in the 90s, Marquis joined Ice-T on Home invasion track “99 problems.” “Yeah, last year a lot of moms asked me/Why I didn't do no old, sex, ugly shit,” Ice-T declares at the beginning of the 1993 track. “But this year, I went down to Miami and got my na from 2 Live /Brother Marquis at home.”
Group members Uncle Luke, Fresh Kid Ice and Marquis reunited in 2015 for a short tour. (And before 2012.) In an interview with Rolling rock at the time, Marquis recalled the group's crazy live shows and an instance where he had to “jump out the back window” of a hotel after punching a fan on stage.
“My manager was telling me the guy had a 12-gauge shotgun,” he recalls.
“Some shows get away with it more than others. When we went to some of the cities, local law enforcement would have a problem with it — there would be protesters and right-wing organizations,” Marquis added at the time. “For the most part, when we were all together, our performances were kind of clean. Yes, the girls wore booty shorts and the lyrics were crazy. Me and Fresh Kid Ice, on the other hand, had some shows that were a little too much.”
Fresh Kid Ice, born Christopher Wong Won, died in 2017 at the age of 53 after a medical condition.
When asked in 2015 what he thought the music was more suggestive than what was conceived of 25 years before, Marquis said it didn't bother him. “They did what they did to us, but we fought and we won, so that rappers and singers and everybody have the freedom to say what they want in their material,” he said. Rolling rock. “That makes me feel good and proud, actually. I stood for it. I fought for it.”
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/brother-marquis-2-live-crew-dead-obituary-1235032338/