Maybe I am in the minority here but I'll be real: the first Fat Boys album is a hip-hop masterpiece (one of the greatest in the genre, period). However every release they had after their debut didn't even come close... they released so much filler and garbage.
There are a couple of salvageable tracks on the other records but they really fell off since their debut. Could it be that the Disco 3 was very *hungry* early in their career and then going gold made them slow down a bit? Also fuck me, all three of the Fat Boys were still in highschool when their debut went gold. Huge success story.
Thank you Kurtis Blow for helping these lads come into the spotlight. How about Larry Smith on the beats too? Larry Smith also produced Whodini's Escape album... Smith is a name for the hip-hop history books.
Shout-out Prince Markie Dee, Kool Rock-ski, and Buffy "the human beatbox" (godfather of beatboxing!). They never needed a studio to rock the house, they could do their whole performance on the street corner impeccably. Watch videos of the Fat Boys from the early 80s, Dee and Kool could finish each other's lines on FREESTYLES!! And the human beatbox supplying the beats consistently and on time. No other hip-hop group seemed to be that tight, then or now. True chemistry.
I would trade MF Doom's entire career for the first Fat Boys album; Doom would be fine with that.