Happy 35th Anniversary to Biz Markie’s second studio album The Biz Never Sleeps, originally released October 10, 1989.
[Editor’s Note: ‘The Biz Never Sleeps’ is not currently available in authorized form via major streaming services, hence the absence of embedded audio in this article. If you happen to have a physical copy of the album on cassette, CD or vinyl, we encourage you to play it loud and often.]
People have frequently said that there’s no father to the style of Ol’ Dirty Bastard. It’s often bugged me that people seem to forget Marcel Hall a.k.a. Biz Markie. The dearly departed hip-hop icon was an early example of how style and presentation could carry the day. The Biz was the more good-natured progenitor of the occasionally wild, care-free rap stylings that would pop up throughout the late ’80s and early ’90s. Possessing boundless energy and backed by banging beats, Biz, a member of the Juice Crew, is one of hip-hop’s most legendary and beloved figures, who blessed his audience with a bevy of classic material before his death in 2021.
Goin’ Off (1988), Biz’s debut, features a lot of great material. However, the album, released through the Cold Chillin’ imprint, often feels like a collection of singles without much continuity. The Biz Never Sleeps, released 35 years ago, flows together as a properly conceived album. It might not have Goin’ Off’s peaks, but there’s an underlying level of consistency that runs through the project.
The Biz Never Sleeps was the most successful album of Biz’s career, built around the success of “Just a Friend.” The universally embraced single, which was certified Platinum, is the most successful song in Biz’s career and the most successful single released through Cold Chillin’. But even though the album is best known for Biz’s incredibly off-key renditions of a recognizable soul track, the project’s appeal springs not only from Biz’s outsized personality, but also his skills as a producer. At the time, members of the Juice Crew were moving away from having Marlon “Marley Marl” Williams produce the entirety of their projects, with Biz favoring working behind the boards himself.
Biz and Cool V, his DJ, are credited for the album’s production, and they do an excellent job of unearthing banging samples from soul, disco, and jazz tracks. To assist in the studio, Biz worked with the now legendary Ivan “Doc” Rodriguez and Paul C. McKasty, who engineered the recording sessions. Marley Marl was brought in to mix the album, which became an unheralded factor in its success.
On the mic, Biz had a long and established history for keeping things loose on his projects, and The Biz Never Sleeps is looser than most. At least in terms of lyricism, as Biz seems like he’s freestyling on many of the tracks. On “Check It Out” and “Me Vs. Me” he extemporaneously strings together lines and phrases, keeping things moving while he disperses wisdom. The production shines on both tracks, whether it’s Biz rapping to an early usage of Yvonne Fair’s “Let Your Hair Down” on “Check It Out,” or recreating what sounds like the main groove to Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” with his mouth on “Me Vs. Me.”
Biz also sounds like he’s winging it on a few of the narrative-based songs. He describes “real puppy love” on “She’s Not Just Another Woman (Monique),” where he recounts his attachment to his kindergarten girlfriend, and his reunion with her years later. He goes for heartfelt on “My Man Rich,” celebrating the life of a longtime friend, who, as it turns out, was a benevolent crack dealer. There is a relevant subtext to the song, as Biz stresses that his friend only turned to drug dealing out of necessity, as the job market in their neighborhood was bone dry and Rich needed to support his wife and family.
And, yes, Biz very much sounds like he’s flying by the seat of his pants for much of “Just a Friend.” Biz maintained the song was based on a true story about a girlfriend, who’s infidelity he discovered during a surprise visit at her college campus. If you dig into it, the song really shouldn’t work: Biz doesn’t exactly craft the most enthralling narrative, sounding like he was making up his verses as he went along in the vocal booth. What holds things together is the comically awful singing, which the average person could relate to, and the beat.
The track itself was born out of Biz’s desire to create a song using the drum break from Lee Dorsey’s “Get Out My Life, Woman,” which he believed he could turn into a platinum hit. Because it was the late 1980s, it took Biz a while to track down the 45 RPM of the now classic break. Biz had also wanted to pair the drums with the piano solo from Freddie Scott’s “(You) Got What I Need,” only to discover that the tempos for each of the samples didn’t match up. As a result, he got a friend to replay Scott’s piano solo at the correct speed.
Apparently, the original version of the song took some finessing to get to the final form. According to Tyrone “Fly Ty” Williams, the founder of Cold Chillin’, Biz recorded the song as one long verse, with him braying the very recognizable chorus only at the end. In Ben Merlis’ Goin Off: The Story of the Juice Crew and Cold Chilin Records, Williams maintained it was Marley’s idea to break the song into three verses, with the hook appearing a couple of times. It’s a weird balance, because the story doesn’t really require the third verse treatment, but the endearing hook, which makes up around 75% of the song’s appeal, works better when heard multiple times.
Biz delivers more thought-out concept-based songs, and they’re among the more entertaining of the album’s recordings. Most notable is “Spring Again,” the album’s second single. Even though The Biz Never Sleeps was released in the fall, he celebrates the happiness and pleasant weather that spring can bring over an appropriately joyous track. He also adds advice to both men and women on how to deal with an unfaithful partner.
“The Dragon” is one of the album’s most outright goofy entries. It serves as the long-player’s version of “Pickin’ Boogers,” with Biz describing the perils of having bad breath and/or wretched body odor. Biz later attempts to recapture the magic of “The Biz Dance” on “Mudd Foot,” naming his new dance routine after the benevolent and wise vagrant from Fat Albert. Like many great hip-hop songs describing a new dance craze, Biz never really describes exactly how to do the Mudd Foot, but that’s not really the point. Much of the entertainment comes from Biz riffing in the recording between verses.
In terms of structure, the best executed song is “A Thing Named Kim,” despite its problematic nature. The track was originally recorded by Grandmaster Caz (it’s appeared on an album that feature’s the O.G.’s unreleased recordings from the 1980s). Biz’s version is superior, as he delivers his verses with some solid panache and humor, rapping over a sample of Aaron Neville’s “Hercules.” What doesn’t work is the song’s “punchline,” which is centered on a heaping serving of transphobia. As I’ve written many times when paying tribute to albums from this era, the late 1980s/early 1990s were a much less enlightened time.
The album ends with a stretch of the album’s best songs. “I Hear Music” is Biz’s celebration of the musical artform and how it moves the audience. Rapping to a sample of a live version of Curtis Mayfield’s “We’re a Winner,” he heralds the block parties he attended while growing up and lauds the power of hip-hop music as it grows in popularity. “Biz In Harmony” is one of the rare hip-hop doo-wop tracks, with Biz and crew rapping/singing in four-part harmony to the drum-breakdown from Kraftwerk’s “Numbers.”
The Biz Never Sleeps end with “Things Get Easier,” one of the most underrated and oddly titled anti-drug songs of the era. Especially since the subject is decidedly NOT about things getting easier. Instead, Biz describes three acquaintances who have ruined their lives through their connections, including an incarcerated once “big time hoodlum” and a pair of former fly girls turned crack addicts. The song is worth it alone to hear Biz pleadingly bellow the hook to Rita Marley’s “One Draw.”
The Biz Never Sleeps’ legacy centers around “Just a Friend,” which is understandable, as the song is one of the best-known hip-hop singles in the genre’s 50+ year history. But since there’s so much additional material to enjoy, I’ve never liked that the project too often gets boiled down to that one hit. Biz might have liked to let it all hang out, but he proved more than capable of conceiving and releasing a product that demonstrated a wide array of talent. It’s a shame that it’s not on streaming for a wider audience to enjoy.