A Button on Marley Marl's 808 Stuck While He Was Producing “Make the Music with Your Mouth, Biz”
The masterful Juice Crew producer, the Diabolical Biz, and a random malfunction that changed the sound of a classic.
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I spent the better part of the past week working on a long-form article. I’m going to keep the specific focus of it vague for now, but hopefully I’ll be able to share more soon.
It was a difficult but rewarding story to write - one that took almost as much time to research as it took to type up. I spent many, many hours sifting through articles, books, interviews, and YouTube videos just to get a sense of how to make all of the information fit into some kind of cohesive storyline.
As is always the case with deep dive stories like this, I had to leave some goodies on the cutting room floor. While I was rereading Brian Coleman’s essential Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies, an interesting tidbit about Biz Markie’s Goin’ Off album stood out to me. It’s kind of a minor detail, one you could almost miss if you were zoning out while reading. It didn’t make the final version of my article, but I found it fascinating.
Apparently, the practice version of the hit “Make the Music with Your Mouth, Biz” used “the ‘Pink Panther’ beat.” I’m assuming means Biz had a beat in the stash that sampled the “Pink Panther Theme.” He ultimately didn’t like the track, so he and Juice Crew founder/in-house producer Marley Marl went in a different direction creatively.
Marley Marl was using his 808 to produce the new beat for Biz, an apparently common practice for Marley at the time. “Regardless of how clean or brand-new the record was that he was sampling, or how light the production might have been, he always gave it a really gritty feel when sampled it,” Big Daddy Kane said in the Check The Technique chapter on Long Live The Kane. “He always put the 808 to it and gave it a heavy bottom and warm feel.”
According to Check The Technique, Biz gave Marley the outline of how he wanted the beat to sound - really bassy. However, as they were recording, something happened that changed the sound of the instrumental. “I wanted the 808 bass sound to be deeper, but his button got stuck so it ended up with less bass,” Biz told Brian Coleman.
There are a million of these tiny accidents in the history of recorded music, but they always make me wonder. Would it have made a difference if that 808 button didn’t stick? Would the record have been completely different? And would it still be regarded as the classic if Biz’s original vision for the beat was fulfilled?
Obviously, we’ll never know, but it’s interesting to consider.
Another thing that stood out to me - it’s crazy how many times people have sampled older rap records like “Make the Music with Your Mouth, Biz.”
French rap group Suprême NTM used it on their 1998 single “Ma Benz” featuring Lord Kossity.
The Trackmasters sampled it on Mya and Jay-Z’s 2000 hit “Best of Me, Pt. 2.”
Even Prince Paul put a subtle bit of the drums to use on The Gravediggaz bugged out “Constant Elevation.”
In the end, I say all this to say that beatmaking/sampling is really complicated. There are endless layers to this stuff and the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t really know anything.
I had no idea so many people sample “Make the Music with Your Mouth Biz.” There are several old-school rap records I discovered that have been sampled well over 300 times.
It’s just more information to absorb in an endlessly fascinating world full of infinitely creative and innovative people.