Biz Markie

Marcel Theo Hall better known by his stage name Biz Markie, is a rapper, DJ, and comedian, best known for the single "Just a Friend", an American top-10 hit in 1989.


Markie's career began in Long Island in the early 1980s, where he established his reputation as a beat-box and rapper. He often frequented Brentwood and other Long Island areas to attend hip hop jams. MC Shan and Roxanne Shante were Marley Marl's and Cold Chillin' Records first acts. Biz beatboxed on Roxanne Shante's underground hit "Def Fresh Crew", which lent credibility to his recording career and put Cold Chillin' on the map. In the same year, Biz Markie's 'coming out' single, "Make the Music With Your Mouth, Biz", was released on Prism Records. He released his debut album, Goin' Off, which attracted a fair amount of attention, largely due to the lead single, "Make the Music With Your Mouth, Biz". The album also featured the underground hit singles "Nobody Beats The Biz", "The Vapors" and "Pickin' Boogers". Markie lives in Laurel, Maryland.


As one of the most prominent hip-hop stars of a still low-key musical scene, expectations were high for Biz's next album, I Need a Haircut. Sales were already disappointing when Biz was served a lawsuit by Gilbert O'Sullivan, who claimed that the album's Alone Again featured an unauthorized sample from his hit Alone Again . O'Sullivan's claim was upheld in a landmark ruling, Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records, Inc., that altered the landscape of hip-hop, finding that all samples must be cleared with the original artist before being used. In accordance with the ruling, Warner Bros., the parent company of Cold Chillin', had to pull I Need a Haircut from circulation, and all companies had to clear samples with the samples' creators before releasing the records. This development reflected the increasing popularity of hip-hop and the financial stakes over which releases were set. Biz responded in 1993 with the mischievously titled All Samples Cleared!, but his career had been hurt by the publicity emanating from the lawsuit, and the record suffered accordingly. For the remainder of the decade, he stayed out of the spotlight, occasionally doing work like his 1996 freestyle rap commercial on MTV2 and many guest appearances with the Beastie Boys, "Check Your Head", "Ill Communication", "Hello Nasty", and their anthology The Sounds of Science. He also rapped on the song "Schizo Jam", on Don Byron's 1998 release, "Nu Blaxploitation" and worked with Canibus on the first track on the Office Space soundtrack.

(read more @ wikipedia.org)