Mark D. Ross, best known as the rapper Brother Marquis in 2 Live Crew, has died, according to a social media post by the group and a report from TMZ. “Mark Ross AKA Brother Marquis of the 2 Live crew has went to the upper room,” 2 Live Crew wrote on Instagram. He was 58.
Born Mark D. Ross in April 1966, Brother Marquis grew up in Rochester, New York, with his mother before moving to Los Angeles, California, as a teenager. While still in junior high school, he crossed paths with rapper Rodney-O, and the two started the Caution Crew, releasing a handful of 12″ singles like “Westside Storie” and “Rhythm Rock.”
The rapper Fresh Kid Ice—who died in 2017—formed 2 Live Crew with DJ Mr. Mixx and Amazing Vee in Riverside, California, in 1984, but Amazing Vee dipped out shortly afterward. Miami rapper Luke Skyywalker invited 2 Live Crew to relocate to his Florida city and, when they obliged, he joined their ranks as a hype man and label owner. The group had already recorded a few songs, including “Trow the D,” before DJ Mr. Mixx crossed paths with Brother Marquis at parties. Impressed by his sense of humor, they invited the then-19-year-old to join 2 Live Crew in 1986 and help shape the direction of 2 Live Crew Is What We Are, their debut LP. While the Miami bass group courted plenty of controversy with that album and its breakout hit, “We Want Some Pu–y,” it was their next string of records—1988’s Move Somethin’, 1989’s As Nasty as They Wanna Be, and 1990’s Banned in the U.S.A.—that propelled their raunchy hip-hop to national fame with songs like “Me So Horny” and “Banned in the U.S.A.”
2 Live Crew were proud to make history with those latter two records: As Nasty as They Wanna Be was the first album to be declared legally obscene (a judgment that was later overturned), and the cheekily titled follow-up Banned in the U.S.A. was the first album to sport the black-and-white “Parental Advisory” sticker from the Recording Industry Association of America. 2 Live Crew got into legal trouble again with a parody cover of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman,” which appeared on As Nasty as They Wanna Be. It spawned the Supreme Court case Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., which ultimately deemed that a commercial parody falls under the doctrine of fair use.
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