dead at 57, he was a rap legend.

The first thing you need to know about the late Marcel Theo Hall, better known to the world as rapper Biz Markie, is that he had a musical career that few people have fully struggled with. Biz could do it all: beatboxing, strumming records with his mouth, singing out of tune with emotion and fervor, and showing off the best entertainers of his day, all with pure energy and personality. In the 1980s, as rappers came to stand out for their lyrical prowess or street intelligence, Biz stood out from rhyme techs and socially conscious scammers and preachers – instead he manifested a goofball that always commanded. with all due respect. Biz could hold out with Big Daddy Kane or Heavy D; he’s influenced everyone from Biggie Smalls to Anthrax; he could provide a snarling hook for Jay-Z or make the most joyful Elton John cover you’ve ever heard; he could spin mediocre tunes from ’70s rock staples like Ted Nugent and Gilbert O’Sullivan to gold. Throughout it all, he remained approachable, self-effacing and funny, someone unusually okay with getting caught with his pants down and his finger up his nose while in a public restroom.

Biz Markie, who died on Friday July 16 of type 2 diabetes and at a tragically young age, like so many of his generation, was a multifaceted original creator, in a way that those who know him mainly as the “Just a Ami” dude never fully realized. It’s a shame, because Biz’s legacy in rap music is far more important than most modern fans of the genre know. ( Don’t get me wrong, “Just a Friend” is a great classic song, and the reason it remains so beloved is because it’s Biz at its best. But it’s not Biz’s best.)

Biz Markie’s career began where so many other hip-hop greats did: in the nightclubs and back alleys of Reagan-era New York, where he perfected his vocal percussion, rhymes. and his platinum tricks in front of the public in real time while taking inspiration from the street poets quickly arise around him. As he told the Washington Post Magazine in 2019, his nickname doesn’t come from German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck, as many may have assumed; instead, it came from the stage name of pioneering rapper Busy Bee Starski, which Marcell Hall added to his childhood neighborhood nickname on Long Island, Markie – he was always more deeply in tune with his city and its scenes. booming arts than with anything else. As hip-hop became a much more powerful musical force throughout the ‘golden age’ of the ’80s, Biz found a home with Juice Crew, the legendary Queens-based rap collective led by DJ Marley Marl who produced figures like Kool G Rap and Masta Ace and led to some of the most important early cuts in rap.

But as Biz’s compatriots took more confrontational approaches to the scene, from the so-called War of Bridges to “Roxanne’s Revenge,” he introduced himself in his debut in 1988, Go, as a beatboxer, insult comic, nose picker, and storyteller who could capture the heart of New York City. There is perhaps no better example of his vivid imagination than the LP coupe “Vapors”, based on a definition of the word titular Biz came up with itself (“The meaning of this word, no doubt / Means that nobody wants to be there when you’re depressed / Once you’re established and you have a lot of money / Everyone wants to be your mate and darling. “)” Vapors “didn’t just express a concept familiar to Newly known rappers in the growing genre, but he also told true stories of people in Biz Circle, from hook man TJ Swan to songwriter Big Daddy Kane, from DJ Cutmaster Cool V to Biz Markie him. It was straightforward, personal and even vulnerable (“After being rejected I was very depressed / Sat and wrote def doo-doo rhymes while I was at rest”); it was also catchy and universal. Biz’s concept of “vapors” would not only enter the rap lexicon, but the song would be referenced and sampled. illustrated by rappers over the decades, with the line written by Biz “Damn, it feel good to see people up on it” appearing verbatim in song after song (Snoop Dogg fully cover of “Vapors” in 1997 then in another remix in 2017). After Go hit the Billboard charts in the spring of 1988, Biz Markie would gain more attention, in part thanks to his appearance in Paul Simon’s video “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” just later that year.

1989 will see the release of The Biz never sleeps, which featured Biz’s one and only top 10 hit, “Just a Friend,” the classic story of her pursuit of a girl who kept blowing him up for another guy she simply called a friend. The video, featuring Biz cosplaying Mozart, has become so ubiquitous to the point of earning a Beavis and Butthead skewers, and the song, which would appear in movie and TV soundtracks and acclaimed songlists around the world, would be so inevitably associated with Biz that it would define its obituaries and interactions with ordinary citizens, who in this way day take it for a hitting wonder.

After the “Just a Friend” craze, Biz released I need a haircut in 1991. This LP was not as successful as Biz’s previous two, but it did become notorious in rap history for the track “Alone Again”, which sampled rock daddy’s favorite “Alone Again (Naturally) “by Gilbert O’Sullivan without permission (however, as Oliver Wang wrote in 2013, Biz and his label tried to clear the sample with O’Sullivan, but were turned down; the problem arose when they released the song anyway). Year Haircut came out, O’Sullivan sued Biz in a landmark lawsuit that would forever change the hip-hop landscape: the judge ruled in O’Sullivan’s favor, banning Cold Chillin ‘Records from selling “Alone Again” or Haircut and referral of the alleged theft of samples to a criminal court (which was dropped). As I wrote in 2019, this affair, along with the sample-based costume from rock band Turtles vs. Biz’s eccentric contemporaries, De La Soul, chilled the future of sample-rich hip-hop, s ‘away from copy and paste. collages from groups like Public Enemy and towards a more polished and understated aesthetic. The decision also, equally unsettling, precluded the official release of a myriad of other songs. As of this writing, you can’t listen to many of De La Soul’s or Biz Markie’s early catalogs on streaming services, putting many of their classics out of reach in a music economy dominated by Spotify. De La Soul has tried repeatedly over the decades to ensure a more level playing field for the digital release of his music, notably by appearing on the cartoon. Teen Titans Go! just earlier this year; Biz would insolently release an album titled All samples deleted! in 1993, but he rarely made other similar public efforts to get his old albums on digital platforms. (You can shell out almost $ 200 to get a vinyl pressing of The Biz never sleeps from Amazon, however.)