Biz Markie: Rap’s class clown is dead – culture

What you tend to forget when you experience the heights of fall and egomania, the hubris and fantasies of power that determine a large part of the hip-hop business: At the very beginning, rappers were mainly entertainers and master of the arts. They kept the party going. Moderated the people from their crew who weren’t very good at words themselves, the breakdancers and record scratchers. And every now and then put a few gags. Life was dark enough in the late seventies, and not just in Harlem and the Bronx.

That was the most important, the dream role for Biz Markie: that of Comic Relief, the “Hamlet” gravedigger. The only piece in hip-hop history that tells completely about eating nasal populations comes from him, as well as a reflection on the wonderful privacy that awaits people at the toilet. Markie, “The Diabolical One”, was also talented as a so-called beatboxer, imitating rhythm tracks with his mouth, and even that has a comedic note. On “Def Fresh Crew”, his first record from 1986, he can be heard as the human drum machine of the rapper Roxanne Shanté. In 1990 he was even on the verge of getting his own cartoon series called “Mouth Man”, but it didn’t come to that.

“I’m the class clown in the rap business,” he said DJ Times in an interview. “As much as you rap about self-destruction, you won’t stop anyone from ruining themselves. I’m here to make people happy.”

Which doesn’t mean that Biz Markie was just a marginal figure. Marcel Theo Hall, born in Harlem in 1964, quickly caught up with the burgeoning rap scene through DJ engagements in New York nightclubs, and was part of the Juice Crew with pioneers such as Shanté, Marley Marl and Big Daddy Kane. In 1989 he landed a huge crossover hit with the song “Just A Friend”. With its refrain melody (borrowed from a piece by soul singer Freddie Scott), the song also interested the pop audience, it rose to number 9 in the US charts and brought the musician a platinum award. In the text Markie tells of lovesickness, in the video he is sitting at the piano as Mozart with a crazy wig. From then on, as a world star, he would have been very easy to employ.

The experts argue whether it was because of the spectacular event in 1991 that nothing came of the great career. The cause of the disaster was the song “Alone Again”, for which Markie had used excerpts from the Schnulze “Alone Again (Naturally)” by the Irish singer Gilbert O’Sullivan. In hip-hop, which then was far less economically relevant than it is today, such samples were usually used without being asked. From time to time the authors were rewarded retrospectively through small official channels when someone complained.

O’Sullivan’s record company, however, sued Markie’s label. If you use a sample by another artist in your own song without asking beforehand and agreeing conditions, so the reasoning, you are violating copyright law. The plaintiffs were right, the album had to be fetched back from the stores. The consequences were not only dramatic for Biz Markie. The precedent radically changed creative practice throughout the rap business. What had previously sprung from the DJ’s artistic impulse now became a matter of negotiation. Always more expensive, always more political.

Markie never returned to the status of the late eighties. He tried his hand at singing but failed miserably because the Autotune software had yet to be invented. He played himself in films, appeared on celebrity fitness shows, and as a Spongebob voice actor. After all, he benefited from positioning himself as an iconic character so early on. And he later benefited from the fatal verdict: In 1997, of all people, the Rolling Stones sampled one of his pieces for their song “Anybody Seen My Baby?”. He must have received a few checks for that.

In the past few months, Biz Markie had to struggle with various health problems, had to be hospitalized with severe diabetes, and suffered a stroke. On Friday, its management announced, “The Clown Prince of Rap” died in Baltimore at the age of 57.