‘He knew hip-hop could change his life’: how Biz Markie made his name
When the future director Sacha Jenkins was growing up in Astoria, Queens, he was enthralled by a New York rapper who constituted a jolt to the musical system. “Biz Markie was so fresh and new,” Jenkins remembers of the early days of the late legend and hip-hop change-maker. “So compared to what hip-hop is today and what people are into now, his story is refreshing in a lot of ways.”
Related: Biz Markie, rapper known for Just a Friend, dies at age 57
For the man born into a housing project before living in a tent under a Long Island bridge and then entering foster care, Markie funneled joyful art through his experiences, all the while keeping a childlike wonder about the world and influencing a genre in the midst of changing culture forever. It’s an improbable success story highlighted in Jenkins’s new documentary All Up in the Biz: The Life and Rhymes of Biz Markie.
A veteran director who most recently helmed Showtime’s Everything’s Gonna Be All White, which put the modern Black experience under a microscope, Jenkins spent the past two years immersing himself in the world of the man many call the Clown Prince of Hip-Hop, with the two discussing a potential project about his life before the rapper’s July 2021 death.
“When he was around, I couldn’t make it happen; it just never worked out for whatever reason,” he recalls. “Now it feels great to get the thing out there and know that it’s at least what I believe something he’d be into based on the conversations we had.”
The film is an eccentric portrait of an equally eccentric and iridescent figure. While it naturally opens with and touches on Markie’s biggest mainstream hit in the form of 1989’s Just a Friend and delivers tales of his passion for beatboxing (he’d have to soak his lips in ice he’d perform so so fiercely), it also takes a wider view of Markie’s vast influence and life outside of the microphone, and features interviews with his doting widow Tara Hall as well as a disparate list of Markie disciples and friends including the beatboxer Doug E Fresh and Run-DMC’s Darryl McDaniels, as well as Nick Cannon and Tracy Morgan.
“There was something very simple about Biz, and I don’t mean this in a negative way, but in a creative way,” muses Jenkins. “I think he just genuinely had so much love for hip-hop and knew that hip-hop could change his life. It was his Superman cape. Once he donned it, he could change his destiny.”
Along the way, his unique style and trailblazing career wound up making an impression on some of hip-hop’s other founding fathers. “Look at his influence on guys like Rakim and Big Daddy Kane, two of the most important poets in the culture,” says Jenkins of one of the more overlooked aspects of Markie’s career. “At first, he was a guy who people made fun of. Plenty of people told him ‘no’ early on, but he knew what he wanted to do. Knowing that at such a young age is rare.”
Jenkins also highlights the joy and flat-out humor of Markie in both his music (songs like 1987’s Pickin’ Boogers which opens with the line “Now this may sound disgusting and like very gross” and is about exactly what its title suggests), and career (an appearance as a beatboxing alien in Men in Black II). He also embodied a youthful aura stemming from his habits as a candy-loving adult who never drank, smoked or did drugs.
“He collected toys like Charlie’s Angels dolls and was into video games, candy and cereal,” says Jenkins. The director honored Markie’s penchant for silliness by featuring animation and even puppetry, recruiting the puppetmaster from the show Crank Yankers to creatively re-enact Markie’s year in the hospital following the effects of a stroke.
“I used puppets to get into his life in the hospital,” explained Jenkins. “This was around Covid, so a lot of people who really loved him really didn’t get to see him in his last days unfortunately. So I wanted to give a sense of him there and with his wife by his side.” It was a concept Markie was fully on board with. “I said, ‘Hey man, would you be into some puppets?’ and he said ‘Hell yeah, I’d be into some puppets,’” laughs Jenkins.
As hip-hop celebrates its 50th anniversary, Markie’s music remains an indelible part of its lore. But overall, it was Markie’s effect on people that Jenkins says he wants to shine a brighter light on.
“We went back with Rakim to the high school he went to with Biz (Longwood in Middle Island, New York) and we’re sitting in the lunchroom and I asked, ‘Where did you go when you learned he passed?’ He looked at me and said, ‘I came right into this room and wept.’ It was great to know that people were not afraid to tell me how much they loved him.”
All Up in the Biz: The Life and Rhymes of Biz Markie premieres on Showtime and Paramount + on 11 August with a UK date to be announced
