Christopher Wong Won, a.k.a. Fresh Kid Ice, an Asian rapper and pioneer who co-founded 2 Live Crew, died on Tuesday. He was 53.
Live Crew’s longtime manager, Debo, confirmed that Wong Won had died but would only say that the death was due to a “medical condition” and did not elaborate further.
2 Live Crew member Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell took to Twitter after the news, writing, “My condolence goes out to the family Chris Wong Won Fresh Kid Ice of the 2 Live Crew who just passed away people we lost a legend.”
My Condolence goes out to the family Chris Wong Wong Fresh Kid Ice of the 2 Live Crew who just passed away people we lost a legend
— LUTHER R CAMPBELL (@unclelukereal1) July 13, 2017
Wong Won, who comes from Trinidadian and Chinese descent, is often credited as the first prominent Asian rapper.
“When we first started, a lot of people didn’t know I was Asian,” Fresh Kid Ice told Vice in 2016. “But when the videos came out, it basically crossed the group over. Other people could be like, ‘Damn, that could be me. I didn’t know an Asian dude was rapping like that!’”
In the late 1980s, 2 Live Crew made waves when their 1989 album, As Nasty As They Wanna Be, was ruled to be obscene by a Florida judge. A record store owner was arrested after refusing to stop selling it, and Campbell and Wong Won were also arrested after a live show. However, the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals eventually overturned the obscenity ruling, and the Supreme Court would not hear the appeal.
The Supreme Court did, however, get involved when the “clean” version of that same album included a track called “Pretty Woman” that had an unapproved clip of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman.” The Court ruled that “Pretty Woman” was a parody and therefore subject to fair use rights.
Wong Won remained with the group until their split in 1998’s The Real One and then continued on as a solo artist for some time. He suffered strokes in 2008 and 2010 and had to relearn how to speak and walk. He recovered and reunited with Uncle Luke and Brother Marquis before publishing his memoir, My Rise 2 Fame, last year.
