The music got there before the speeches did.
By the time the crowd filled the corner of Schenck Avenue near New Lots Avenue on Saturday morning, Fat Boys records were coming through a speaker on the block, and the sound did what a program never could. It set the day’s tone. It was warm out. Chairs filled early. Family, friends and neighbors, many of whom grew up with the group or grew up on the records, sat patiently, and around the edges old friends and old colleagues found each other, shook hands and hugged.
On August 22, 2026, Schenck Avenue was co-named Fat Boys Avenue.
The ceremony was hosted by Council Member Chris Banks, Deputy Leader of the 42nd Council District, who put the honor in the context of what else is written on East New York’s street signs.
“A lot of the streets here in the 42nd Council District are named after slave owners. So we wanted to set the tone and say that we wanted to name streets after our sheroes and our heroes.”
Banks said he took the idea early on to Damon Wimbley, known as Kool Rock-Ski, the group’s surviving member, and that Wimbley was supportive from the first conversation. “Today we are here preserving history, celebrating a culture, and ensuring that the future generations” know that some of hip-hop’s most influential pioneers came from these blocks, he told the crowd.
He also made a point of the group’s smallest, most local details: hanging out at George Gershwin Junior High School, beatboxing in the back of the classroom, time spent between 630 and 640 Stanley Avenue in the Linden Houses, and Prince Markie Dee buying his sneakers at Mr. Lee’s.
“Is Mr. Lee’s still around?” Banks asked.
The crowd answered yes.
The block, remembered out loud
That call-and-response ran through the entire morning. Wimbley’s remarks were less a speech than a walking tour of a childhood, and the audience served as fact-checkers, confirming details out loud as he named them: the daycare he attended, the stores that are still there, the park where he first heard someone rap.
He grew up on this street. He described first hearing a DJ, DJ Robbie D, set up in Schenck Park, hooking equipment into the lights while officers from the 75th Precinct let them be. He talked about George Gershwin Junior High School and a principal named Mr. Strong, about a snowball fight, about Thomas Jefferson High School, about wanting to play football and wanting to box, and about how rapping was simply the thing that was around them.
The group’s break came from a rap and dance contest his older sister pushed him toward. They had gone, he said, mainly to support another East New York group, the Bad Boys. They entered anyway, won the semifinal at the Disco Fever, and went on to win the finals at Radio City Music Hall, where UTFO finished second, he said. He and Buff Love had a strict house to answer to that night, and what saved him was a WBLS announcer naming “the winners of the rap and dance contest, the Disco Three, from East New York.”
They wanted the DJ equipment. They took the recording contract instead.
Wimbley credited Kurtis Blow with two things: the group’s name and an education in the business. The name came off a track hook Blow played for them in the studio: Fat Boys, you know they’re down by law. Wimbley said the three of them looked around the room wondering who the song was about.
“One thing about Kurtis Blow, what he did was give us the education of the music industry, and to always write our own rhymes, because it’s publishing, and it keeps money coming into your pocket for the rest of your life.”
He told the crowd about the first all-rap tour, about touring Germany and Switzerland, about Michael Jackson walking up to them at the 1988 Grammys, about a three-picture deal with Warner Bros. He also named what he believes the culture lost: “Corporate America came in and just swooped in,” he said. “We didn’t have a stranglehold on the culture, and we still don’t.”
Then he said why the sign matters.
“That’s why it’s so important that this street sign is up, because Buff and Mark is no longer here, and they were a huge part of this culture,” he said. “As long as I’m here, I’m going to represent them.”
Darren “Buff Love” Robinson, the group’s human beatbox, died December 10, 1995, at 28. Mark “Prince Markie Dee” Morales died February 18, 2021, at 52, according to AllHipHop, which also reported the co-naming. The trio started as the Disco 3 and went on to star in Krush Groove and Disorderlies and to record “Wipe Out” with the Beach Boys.
Wimbley closed his remarks with a list: rest in peace to Prince Markie Dee, to Buff Love, to their road manager, to his mother and father. “This is a beautiful day,” he said. “May this sign that goes up on this particular street be a reminder that anybody coming out of East New York can make it.”
“A foundational pillar”
The morning drew people who were in the room when the culture was built. Music-industry figures from hip-hop’s early architecture sat in the audience, and other artists came out, among them Blahzay Blahzay, recognized from the podium.
Darryl “DMC” McDaniels of Run-DMC came to make an argument.
“They don’t get the credit they deserve. The Fat Boys are a foundational pillar in the temple of this culture that we call hip hop.”
He drew a line between the record business and the culture. “Success in the music business has nothing to do with your position in this hip hop culture,” he said. “That’s a totally different conversation.” He credited the Fresh Fest and Ricky Walker’s vision for seeing what the Fat Boys, Run-DMC and Whodini could become, and he offered a piece of trivia as proof of influence: “Hit and Run,” on Run-DMC’s Raising Hell, has Run beatboxing in an attempt to emulate Buff.
“When we wasn’t on stage tearing down arenas,” McDaniels said, “we was walking through every city and town in this nation, crying, laughing, because we was having so much fun.”
Brooklyn rapper Prayah, who was signed by Busta Rhymes, spoke next and put himself in the line. “I’m considered one of the new fat boys,” he said. “Salute to the forefathers of this, ’cause if it wasn’t for them, it’d be no me.” He told the crowd he was found on the street “right here from the Pink Houses,” that he has been shot four times, and that “music saved my life.”
The clearest measure of what the morning meant came from Quinton Robinson, Buff Love’s son, who was five years old when his father died.
“Words can’t really explain,” Robinson said. “Just a great, great feeling to finally see my pops and Cool Rock and the rest of the members getting their flowers.” Robinson said Snoop Dogg once told him the Fat Boys were part of why he started rapping, and that his first name was Snoop Rock-Ski, after Kool Rock-Ski. He talked about his father’s style and the space he made for big men in the culture. And he ended where Banks and Wimbley did: “It’s good motivation for the kids from around here, so they can see like one day they might be able to do this also.”
The paperwork behind the sign
The co-naming was enacted through Int. No. 1338-2025, which became Local Law 121 of 2025 on August 13, 2025, per the Council’s Legistar record. That bill co-named 128 thoroughfares and public places across the five boroughs. Section 25 of the law sets the designation in plain language: new name Fat Boys Avenue, present name Schenck Avenue, limits “Between New Lots Avenue and Hegeman Avenue.”
East New York Times maintains a running record of these designations in its honorary street names archive, and a guide to how to request a co-naming through Community Board 5.
The unveiling
Banks recognized a long list of community leaders: a representative from the Assemblywoman’s office; Brooklyn Community Board 5 Chair Alice Lowman; Orisa Cameron; the president of the Boulevard Tenant Association and members of the association; Dr. Judith Narain of the 75th Precinct Community Council; tenant association members from the Linden Houses; and Prince Markie Dee’s daughter, Christina.
Then the sign itself was presented to Wimbley and to family members before the corner sign was unveiled. The crowd counted down from ten.
“Long live the Fat Boys,” the call went up. “Long live the Disco Three.”
Lowman called it a joyous occasion and thanked Banks’s office for seeing it through. “The rap still goes on,” she said.
Narain framed it for the neighborhood’s young people. “Good things come out of East New York,” she said. “Never underestimate your potential.”
Afterward, Wimbley was asked for the day’s highlight. He talked about the mothers: his own, Miss Robinson, Miss Morales. He talked about being on the block to see it.
“Just being out here by the grace of God and seeing his sign go up,” he said. “I wish they were here to see this.”
His message to the kids on the block was short. Stay in school. Go to class. And then this:
“Look at that sign and know that you can do anything.”
Quotations in this story are drawn from a recording of the ceremony made by East New York Times. Some remarks have been lightly condensed for clarity. Spot an error? Write to info@eastnewyorktimes.com.