Cold Crush Brothers

Emerging from the Bronx in the wake of hip-hop’s mid-’70s arrival, the Cold Crush Brothers stood among the first rap crews to form. Four New York City natives, they had already secured a firm foothold alongside Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, Grand Wizard Theodore & the Fantastic 5 MCs, and the Funky Four Plus One by the time the Sugarhill Gang turned rap into mainstream fare with their multi-platinum 12" “Rapper’s Delight.” Legend holds that a Cold Crush Brothers tape supplied the rhymes a pizza-shop employee—later known as Sugarhill Gang member Big Bank Hank—delivered when Sylvia Robinson encountered him in 1979; rather than identify the actual performers, he assembled companions who soon became the more commercially dominant Sugarhill Gang.

Founding members Grandmaster Caz, the Almighty KG, Tony Tone, JDL, Easy AD, and DJ Charlie Chase combined showmanship with a polished tag-team approach to rapping. Beginning in 1978 they rehearsed and refined their routines for more than a year before taking the stage, most often at the numerous “MC battles” then common. One such contest, recorded in 1981, surfaced in 1991 on Afrika Bambaataa Presents Hip-Hop Funk Dance Classics, Vol. 1; together with the Cold Crush Brothers’ Live in 82 album it captures the form before its transformation into a 1990s commercial force. The straightforward, party-flavored rhymes evoke an earlier era when MC denoted Master of Ceremonies, DJs performed beyond merely scratching over a DAT tape, and references to killing remained purely figurative.

In 1982 the group appeared in the landmark hip-hop film Wild Style and issued the notable 12" “The Weekend.” Although they never issued a conventional full-length album, they placed several influential singles on the Tuff City label, among them “Fresh, Wild, Fly and Bold.” The bulk of those singles appears on the 1995 compilation Fresh, Wild, Fly & Bold. The crew disbanded in 1986 yet resurfaced on Terminator X’s second solo album, Super Bad.