Biz Markie is the personification of hip-hop. An iconic entertainer, gifted as a rapper, singer, beatboxer, dancer, DJ, and producer, while also known as a fashion guru and toy collector. He has collaborated musically with the likes of the Beastie Boys and Will Smith, and as an actor was featured in Men In Black II (2002) and the kids show Yo Gabba Gabba! (2007-2015).
Despite his illustrious career, I sometimes feel that in reflection, the impact of Biz Markie can be downplayed due to his career as a more comical artist running parallel to peers like Eric B. & Rakim, Boogie Down Productions, Big Daddy Kane, and Kool G Rap, who are viewed as more influential on the development of serious hip-hop lyricism, and potentially viewed as maybe even more important to hip-hop history.
In short, I believe it is important to reflect on just how influential Biz Markie was and will continue to be.
Biz Markie: "Now let me take a trip down memory lane"
If one's understanding of Biz Markie comes mainly from "Just A Friend," or his title as the "Clown Prince of Hip Hop," which is accurate, it may not be fully understood how much of a juggernaut he is within hip-hop, starting back in the early '80s when rap records were in their infancy.
As shown in the Showtime documentary All Up in the Biz (2023), directed by Sacha Jenkins, Biz Markie was battle tested like any other MC thanks to his involvement in the early hip-hop scene in Long Island, where he spent his adolescence with his foster family, the Parkers.
Biz was a member or at least affiliated with Long Island rap crews like the New York Employees and the Grooveline Crew, though he was also denied entry into other groups like the Source Crew, as he recounts in the last verse on 1988’s “Vapors.”
He was in another Long Island crew that included the likes of Belal, the future DJ for Groove B Chill who was then called Grand B MC, Chilly Dawg, and Rakim, who at the time was Kid Wizard. They battled with others, and performed at locales like Wyandanch High School, where Rakim and I believe Belal were students.
Biz Markie’s early career also had connections to his birthplace of Harlem. At some time in the early ‘80s he began working for Disco Dave and Mix Master Mike, Manhattan based rap show promoters and record producers.
Disco Dave and Mix Master Mike are perhaps best known today in terms of records for 1980’s “High Power Rap” by Disco Dave and the Force of the Five MCs, better known as the Crash Crew, a legendary Harlem rap group.
A routine Disco Dave does near the end of “High Power Rap” was interpolated for the chorus of Jay-Z’s “Girls, Girls, Girls,” which Biz Markie sang the chorus for along with Q-Tip and Slick Rick, out of which he would be the only one to appear in the Marc Klasfeld directed music video.
Before putting out records, Biz performed in shows put on by Disco Dave and Mix Master Mix alongside others like Lovebug Starksi, the Cold Crush Brothers, Doug E. Fresh, Super Nature (later named Salt-N-Pepa), and Big Daddy Kane, who Biz brought into the fold to peform with him, with Biz beatboxing and Kane rapping.
Still, in the transition from live performance to making records in the mid-‘80s, once he joined the Juice Crew, Biz Markie’s identity as an MC is still sometimes placed beneath his peers such as Roxanne Shante, MC Shan, Big Daddy Kane, or Craig G.
In the context of his time with the Juice Crew, it can be used as a critique against his rapping skills that he had other people writing his rhymes on various occasions. Big Daddy Kane is known to have penned songs such as “Nobody Beats The Biz” and “Biz is Goin’ Off,” and was thanked by Biz for further help in the writing department on his “Dedication” track at the beginning of his sophomore album, The Biz Never Sleeps (1989).
However, while Big Daddy Kane certainly wrote many lyrics for Biz Markie, I still believe it is an oversimplification to say that Kane just wrote things and gave them to Biz.
As Kane himself states in All Up in the Biz (2023), he was approached by Biz Markie to write “Nobody Beats the Biz,” and was given a description by Biz of how the lyrics needed to flow, and that he wanted it to parody the "Nobody Beats the Wiz" jingle for the Wiz electronic store. Even if Biz did not write it, he sought out Kane with an idea already in his head of the chorus and what rhyme style fit him as an MC.
Furthermore, Biz Markie has abilities as an MC and entertainer that go beyond lyricism and his already impressive ability to rap, sing, beatbox, and dance. To explain, I’ll point to 1987’s “Somethin’ Funky,” which was on the B-side of Big Daddy Kane’s first single on Prism Records, “Get Into It.” Both songs were essentially used for Kane to introduce himself on record, bragging and displaying his lyrical abilities.
Marley Marl did both beats, and for "Somethin' Funky" sampled James Brown’s “The Payback,” the voice of Rufus Thomas saying “Uh” at the start of “Do The Funky Penguin (Part 1),” and the opening piano chord from Melvin Bliss' "Synthetic Substitution." He also scratched in James Brown saying “funky” at the beginning of “Funky President (People It’s Bad)” among other things.
“Somethin’ Funky,” which only featured Kane rapping, was then followed by one more song on the B-Side, “Just Rhymin’ With Biz.”
As the title suggests, this song saw Kane and Biz Markie both rapping, reusing the exact same beat from “Somethin’ Funky.” While I believe Big Daddy Kane did write both of their verses for this song, Biz Markie’s performance brings something that cannot be fully written down, and likely wasn't.
The song starts with Biz repeatedly saying “funky” with an echo on his voice, before doing a James Brown like scream as the beat starts. As he was known to do, he shouts out everyone in the studio, getting more and more enthusiastic, until he says “We got Big Daddy Kane in the house! Juice Crew in the house! That’s right.”
The “Juice Crew in the house” line was eventually scratched by his cousin and DJ Cut Master Cool V on Biz’s song “The Do Do,” where he also does shout outs.
While Kane's verse, and Biz's, are both legendary on “Just Rhymin’ With Biz,” I wanted to highlight the beginning of the song to show that Biz Markie’s showmanship was inherent even in how introduced himself before he started rapping.
Biz possessed a level of performance even within how he talked or laughed that defined him as an artist, and which couldn’t exist within the lyrics alone, no matter how good they were.
I think a simple description of Biz Markie as a performer is that he was a rapper whose persona as an MC matched the funk artists that hip-hop loved to sample. This made him special and immensely entertaining.
Songs like the non-scratch version of “This Is Something For The Radio” worked for this exact reason, as Biz essentially just talked and sang over the bassline from Prince’s “New Position” which was featured on Parade (1986). I’m pretty sure Marley Marl didn’t sample directly from that song, instead pulling from the scene of Mary Sharon (Kristin Scott Thomas) and the party band performing “Planet Rock, You Just Can’t Stop” in Under the Cherry Moon (1986), directed by Prince.
If I am viewing hip-hop through the lens of the influence it takes from Jamaica, I would say that Biz Markie is similar to someone like U-Roy, as hearing him toast over a riddim from a rocksteady song was found by some to be even more entertaining than the original song, which is essentially the same logic behind “Just Rhymin’ With Biz” using the same beat as “Somethin’ Funky.”
In terms of how Biz Markie was marketed as a member of the Juice Crew, I would certainly say he was presented as a successor to Rufus Thomas, a legendary R&B and funk artist perhaps best known for his tenure with Stax Records.
In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Thomas recorded dance songs such as “The Dog” or “Do The Funky Chicken,” where he would sing comical lyrics instructing listeners on how to do the dance, while sometimes also mimicking the noise the animal would make.
I believe this connection between Biz and Rufus Thomas was deliberate as Thomas’ “Do The Funky Penguin” was the main sample Marley Marl used for “The Biz Dance.”
Not only was Rufus Thomas a recording artist, but he also had a rich history as an MC and radio disc jockey on WDIA, a historic black radio station in Memphis, which employed other legendary artists like B.B. King, as shown in the documentary B.B. King: Life of Riley (2012), directed by Jon Brewer.
While the founder of the Juice Crew, Mr. Magic, was already a very charismatic radio personality on his “Rap Attack” show on WBLS, along with DJ Marley Marl, I would assert that like Rufus Thomas, Biz Markie certainly had enough antics of his own to have had his own show.
Decades later Biz would have a show on SiriusXM as part of LL Cool J’s Rock The Bells Radio, though this was not too long before his passing in 2021.
In any case, outside of his career with the Juice Crew, the influence of Biz Markie’s persona can be seen in how subsequent hip-hop artists sampled or tried to mimic his music.
De La Soul reference Biz Markie on their song with Common titled “Tha Bizness,” from their fourth album, Stakes Is High (1996). This was three years after they released Buhloone Mindstate (1993), on which Biz Markie was featured on the final song entitled “Stone Age."
The spelling of “Tha Bizness” is in reference to Biz Markie’s name, and the beat features a sample of his voice saying “and” from “A One, Two,” an acapella recording of one of his famous routines that was featured on the “Make Your Music With Your Mouth, Biz” EP from 1986.
Besides sampling his voice directly, I would also argue that the drums on “Tha Bizness” are at least partially designed to mimic Biz Markie’s beatboxing. While he is not unique in this, Biz is famous for his beatboxed version of drum fills before a break.
The opening of “Tha Bizness” sounds familiar to the beatbox Biz does on “A One, Two” after saying “We came, to rock for Brooklyn,” as even his beatbox on “Def Fresh Crew” before Roxanne Shante says “I’m Shante, and the rhymes are def.”
Even if De La Soul didn’t do this on purpose, on the West Coast, the same beatbox from “A One, Two” was sampled directly by DJ Battlecat when producing the song “Squeeze Yo B****” for King T, also featuring Baby S, which is featured on T’s Thy Kingdom Come album.
As another example of Biz Markie’s influence on the West Coast, one of several, Snoop Dogg did a cover of “Vapors” on Tha Doggfather (1996), produced by DJ Pooh, who I believe is also responsible for scratching in Biz’s voice from the original song.
This cover of “Vapors” fit neatly into Snoop’s tradition of covering a classic rap song or two on his early albums, such as his version of Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh’s “La-Di-Da-Di” on Doggystyle (1993) or Dana Dane’s “Cinderfella Dana Dane” on No Limit Top Dogg (1999).
One of the producers who is perhaps best known for sampling Biz Markie is Pete Rock. On his albums with CL Smooth, Mecca And The Soul Brother (1992) and The Main Ingredient (1994), samples of Biz Markie’s voice can be heard throughout.
In particular, Pete Rock often alternates between using samples of Biz Markie’s voice or Big Daddy Kane’s, often taking from their performances on “Just Rhymin’ With Biz.”
On The Main Ingredient, the songs “I Get Physical,” “Check It Out,” and “In the Flesh” all use vocal samples of Big Daddy Kane from "Just Rhymin' With Biz," which are also the source of the song’s titles. Biz Markie’s voice from that song is used in the same way for “Get on the Mic,” while his other songs like “Pickin’ Boogers” and “Vapors” are sampled elsewhere on the project.
Pete Rock has continued this sampling style to this day. On songs such as “Wise Up,” from his 2024 collaboration with Common, The Auditorium Vol. 1, Biz Markie saying “Yo listen” on “Pickin’ Boogers” is sampled near the ending, while MC Shan’s famous “why don’t you wise up, show all the people in the place that you are bright” lyric from “The Bridge” is much more prominently heard and the source of the song title.
Common references Biz Markie in the second verse, and at that part in the music video, directed by Marleaux Désïré, he does the Biz dance.
A Tribe Called Quest, who were peers of Pete Rock as well as their fellow Native Tongue members De La Soul, were also big fans of Biz Markie. I believe the main example of this in their music is “The Chase, Part II,” from their third album, Midnight Marauders (1993).
I think there are two Biz Markie samples on the song. The most prominent is the repeated use of Biz saying, “About to wreck your body and say turn the party out,” from the beginning of the second verse on “Nobody Beats the Biz.”
At the end of the song, Q-Tip begins to do shout outs to people all over the world. He says, “Everybody in (location), rock, rock on,” before moving on to another place and saying the same thing. I believe this is a reference to the way Biz Markie gave shout outs at the end of 1989’s “A Thing Named Kim.”
In Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest (2011), directed by Michael Rapaport, Q-Tip and Phife Dawg are shown preparing for their set at the 2010 Summer Sonic Festival in Japan, and begin doing the Biz dance while rehearsing “The Chase, Part II.”
Outside of other artists who love to sample or imitate Biz Markie, I also think it’s important to briefly mention Biz’s own skills as a producer in his own right.
His production skills are not surprising considering the musical knowledge he showcased through the many songs he could beatbox or sing, ranging from “Numbers” by Kraftwerk to “(You) Got What I Need” by Freddie Scott, a skill which unfortunately got him in legal trouble because of his sampling of “Alone Again (Naturally)” by Gilbert O’Sullivan.
Even after departing from Marley Marl following his legendary production work on Biz Markie’s debut album, Goin’ Off (1988), I would say Biz and Cool V were responsible for some classic beats in their own right.
The first actual rap song on The Biz Never Sleeps (1989), “Check It Out,” utilizes Yvonne Fair’s 1975 song, “Let Your Hair Down.” This was nearly a decade before it’s most famous usage on “Where I’m From” by Jay-Z, produced by Ron “Amen-Ra” Lawrence and Deric “D-Dot” Angelettie, both members of the Hitmen, the production team for Bad Boy Records.
As another example and personal favorite of Biz's later production, the last song on I Need A Haircut (1991), “On and On,” features a prominent sample of “Morning Sickness” from Coryell (1969), the self-titled album by Larry Coryell, a beloved jazz guitarist and pioneer of jazz fusion.
"Morning Sickness" features Coryell on guitar, world-renowned Chuck Rainey on bass, and Bernard Purdie on drums, Purdie being a famous and often sampled drummer in hip-hop, especially following Ultramagnetic MC’s use of his performance on Melvin Bliss’ “Synthetic Substitution” for their 1986 classic, “Ego Tripping.”
In the end, I hope some of these examples showcase how much of a musical whirlwind Biz Markie was, and how huge of a legacy he left behind for the world to enjoy.