With laughter and tears, songs and stories, friends and family of Biz Markie celebrated his life and legacy at a funeral Monday, remembering the rapper as larger than life and full of love.
“He cared for people, he had a way of making us laugh through our pain,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton in his eulogy at the Patchogue Theatre on Long Island, where Biz Markie’s black coffin was placed center stage, an arrangement of white flowers on top.
“He’d come in a room and his presence didn’t have to be announced, it was felt,” Sharpton said.
Markie, known for the 1989 classic “Just a Friend,” died last month at the age of 57. His death brought a stream of tributes from his musical contemporaries and those who were simply fans.
Among those who attended the funeral were Ice-T and Fat Joe, as well as Montell Jordan and Al B. Sure.
Markie, born Marcel Theo Hall, was known for his lighthearted ways, and was the self-proclaimed “Clown Prince of Hip-Hop.”
“The thing I’m going to miss the most about him was every time he would see me, his face would just light up with that Chiclet, toothy smile,” said his widow, Tara Hall.
“He made me laugh every day,” she said. “That is not hyperbole. That is a fact.”
A New York native and pioneering rapper, Markie began his music career in 1985, during the early days of hip-hop music, and became known in the mainstream in 1989 with the platinum-selling song “Just a Friend,” which made VH1′s list of 100 greatest hip-hop songs of all time.
He had a clever-but-comedic approach to his rhymes, which alternated between rapping, singing and beat-boxing. His most famous song “Just a Friend” appears on his second studio album “The Biz Never Sleeps.” Through the years, the song has been used in countless TV commercials, shows and movies.
In 2014, Markie revealed his diabetes diagnosis and how he slimmed down from 385 pounds to 244 to improve his health.
“I wanted to live,” he told ABC News in 2014. “Since I have to be a diabetic, If I didn’t make the changes, it was going to make the diabetes worse. I’m trying to get off [the diabetes meds]. The way you gotta do it is lose the weight. I’m off half my meds, I just got to get off the rest … [The doctors] said I could lose my feet. They said I could lose body parts. A lot of things could happen.”
Markie hadn’t made a studio album since “Weekend Warrior” in 2003, but he did make numerous television appearances, performed voice acting and other special public showings in recent years. Most recently, Markie was serving as a guest host on SiriusXM’s channel 43 — called LL Cool J’s Rock The Bells Radio — which plays old-school rap music.
ArLuther Lee of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed to this report.
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