The Great Biz Markie

Biz Markie turns 45 this year. Rap and hip-hop have been around long enough for its pioneers to reach middle age (Big Daddy Kane will hit 41 in 2009. Roxanne Shante? 40. Melle Mel will be 48. And Kurtis Blow turns the big 5-0.) But I digress...

Few voices in hip-hop over the past 20 years are as unique as that of the great Biz Markie. I still remember "The Vapors from his Goin' Off album back in '88, and do not sleep on Biz' live and fonky performance of "Schizo Jam" on jazzman Don Byron's superb and (underheralded) 1998 CD "Nu Blaxploitation."

But Biz' career is indelibly marked by this 1989 song, "Just a Friend" and the accompanying video, both of which are hilarious (check the Mozart get-up) and poignant at the same time. If mainstream rap would remove the manufactured scowl and get down like this just one time today...