C+C Music Factory, Freedom Williams, and the Atlanta Krunk

Pardon me for what might appear as a “shaggy dog” blog post, but after some recent news of late, I need to tell this story.

A couple of days ago, there was an announcement of “The Great American State Fair,” a 250th anniversary celebration in Washington, D.C. that would feature, among various singers and performers, such names as Morris Day and the Time, Milli Vanilli, C+C Music Factory, Vanilla Ice, and several other late 80’s / early 90’s recording acts. Now to be fair, many of these acts immediately disavowed knowledge of their performing at this event and/or cancelled their appearances, so somebody’s got some explaining to do.

At the time of this blog post, the rap / hip hop group C+C Music Factory is still scheduled to perform at this event. You might remember C+C Music Factory as the group behind two and a half major dance hits in the early 90’s, including “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” and “Here We Go,” along with “Things That Make You Go Hmm.” That’s the half of a hit.

Now C+C Music Factory has its own complicated history. The lead rapper is neither this C nor that C (those are David Cole and Robert Clivilles), he’s Freedom Williams. And more on him later. The lead female vocalist is not the sexy girl in the videos, but instead is a powerful vocalist named Martha Wash – whose original demo track for an unrelated project was edited by C+C Music Factory into the “Everybody Dance Now” chant of their first hit single.

Yeah, this was the time period when session vocalists did one thing and music videos showed another. And 90’s dance / hip hop was full of this.

But back to Freedom Williams. He later purchased the rights to the name C+C Music Factory for live performances (including using variations on the name, like CnC Music Factory and/or C and C Music Factory). David Cole passed way in I believe 1996. Robert Clivilles is still alive, but the last I heard from him, he was posting messages on Facebook about losing the rights to the name to Freedom Williams.

As for Freedom Williams … well, he and I crossed paths about 20 years ago.

And for this, we go to the Albany Patroons.

In 2006, the Albany Patroons and the Continental Basketball Association were both in trouble. Several CBA teams left the league to join the National Basketball Development League (then the D-League, now the G-League). The CBA had to scramble to get enough teams into the league to operate for another season, and pulled teams from the ragtag American Basketball Association (who themselves were sick of the ragtag and disorganized American Basketball Association).

One of those teams was the Charlotte Krunk. The Krunk were in the ABA for one season, but played no games – all the other teams in their division folded before the season started, leaving the Krunk by themselves. Freedom Williams acquired the Krunk, and moved it to Atlanta, where it would join the CBA as the Atlanta Krunk Wolverines.

Yes, the Atlanta Krunk Wolverines. So named because their home court was at Morris Brown College in Atlanta, home of the Morris Brown Wolverines.

Well, by the time the 2007-08 CBA season started, the Atlanta Krunk Wolverines rebranded themselves as the plain old Atlanta Krunk.

And, for their first couple of weeks in the CBA, they were okay. A fair to middling team. Their only true quality player was Zeck Marbury, NBA star Stephon Marbury’s brother. Also on the Krunk’s roster for a time was Grayson Boucher, “The Professor” from those AND1 mixtape basketball tours.

Yeah, we’re not exactly talking about Stephon Curry and Klay Thompson here.

I remember seeing Freedom Williams when the Krunk came up to the Armory for Patroons games. He acted like a big star, and signed plenty of autographs for fans. Meanwhile, the Krunk’s early success folded in a morass of missed paychecks and player defections – heck, the Patroons signed one guy from the Krunk – Miguel Millian – who lasted about eight minutes in one game and was immediately cut afterwards.

At the time, Freedom Williams had a cameraman following him around at various locales – apparently the Krunk were to be part of some reality TV show project. But twenty years later, that video footage remains locked away.

I do remember seeing Freedom Williams at the CBA All-Star Game in Yakima, Washington (yes, I went to Yakima to watch a CBA All-Star contest), and he had that cameraman following him around like a shadow. And I also remember passing him in a hallway when he was screaming profanities into his cell phone while the cameraman was filming all of the action.

But yeah, that CBA season was an absolute cluster. And the Krunk put the F in cluster. The Yakima head coach told me that when they had to play two back-to-back games in Atlanta, Morris Brown College’s gymnasium was freezing cold (apparently Atlanta had a snowstorm that week). The Krunk’s solution? Rent some propane heaters and place them in the arena and hopefully the temperature would rise. Nah. Those propane heaters made the building colder. And you can’t play basketball in a cold arena lest you risk muscle pulls and leg cramps.

The Patroons went there for a road trip in February 2008, and surprisingly the stat book claimed that one of our players, Ian Young, registered a quadruple double, it most likely happened because the stat person in Atlanta was working with pen and paper rather than with the proper CBA-mandated stats software. So there’s that.

Midway through the season, the Krunk folded. The CBA took over the team, and replacement players were used for a few games – but the contests were so lopsided (their final game was a 194-115 loss to East Kentucky), that the CBA eventually took the team out behind the woodshed and gave it the Old Yeller retirement plan. The Krunk’s one season provided a record of 9 wins and 41 losses – including nine forfeits.

The CBA itself would collapse one year later. Freedom Williams may not have been the reason the CBA died; but his ownership in the Atlanta Krunk wasn’t helping.

And now Freedom Williams is back, and maybe he’s part of this “Great American State Fair” event. Or maybe he isn’t. I don’t know.

But if you see someone take the stage in Washington, D.C., and he’s wearing an old red basketball jersey with an Atlanta Krunk logo on it …

You’ll know what’s going on. 😀