Listen: Just A Friend / Biz Markie
Just

A solid ten years before the turn of the century, Biz Markie’s ‘Just A Friend’ was a hit. A mainstream, BILLBOARD Top 100 hit, #9 to be exact.

This was 1989 into 1990, when Young MC’s ‘Bust A Move’ and Kool Moe Dee’s ‘Wild, Wild West’ were sharing slots on the US Pop charts with De La Soul’s ‘My Myself & I’ and A Tribe Called Quest’s ‘I Left My Wallet In El Segundo’. Biz Markie, with most of the Cold Chillin’ roster, fit right in.

Looking back nowadays, they collectively made up the sound of an era gone by, before most hip hop became major label controlled, processed and manufactured. And way before Biz Markie’s beat boxing went out of style.

Listen: Eye Know / De La Soul
Eye Know / De La Soul

When I worked at Island in the late 80′s, the whole UK office were nuts about hip hop, most of them that is. When they’d visit New York for CMJ, or maybe it was called the New Music Seminar then, it would be straight to lower Broadway to buy sneaks and the East Village to see bands, all the while thinking they were steeped in hip hop culture. Pretty funny. Grass is always greener. I was just as guilty of acid house, or Brit pop as it cringingly got coined. De La Soul was top of the list for them all. They’d go on about De La this, De La that, like De La clothes and De La haircuts. It was a bit embarrassing. I suppose the lure of ghetto life was no different then than my attraction to it ten years earlier, whether it be Blaxploitation or funk. So fair enough.

Listen: Peg / Steely Dan
Peg / Steely Dan

I tell you what, my effort to avoid them failed, and De La Soul became a bit of a guilty pleasure. A double pleasure really, as it got me to lower my guard against Steely Dan. During their heyday, I was way more interested in The Buzzcocks or The Heartbreakers than all their polish. Taste changes with age, mine widens in fact. Because of ‘Eye Know’ I suddenly realized my affection for the sampled hook from ‘Peg’.

And I found I do love a nice UK pressed Steely Dan 7″, especially the promos.