BEFORE THEY BECAME LEGENDS, THEY BECAME FRIENDS

A showstopping coming-of-age memoir from hip-hop icon Big Daddy Kane about his unforgettable friendship with Biz Markie and the birth of rap’s Golden Age in New York City.

Big Daddy Kane met Biz Markie during a rap battle at Brooklyn’s Albee Square Mall. The year was 1984. Kane was sixteen, smooth, stylish, and competitive. Biz was twenty, a larger-than-life beatboxing hustler and funny man, spinning outrageous stories and impossible plans. Kane thought he was crazy. Then Biz told him he was going to make it and promised to take Kane with him.

Just Rhymin’ With Biz is the story of close friends riding trains between Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island, sneaking into clubs, chasing girls, writing rhymes, hustling their way onto stages, and finding their place in a culture exploding around them. Park jams were becoming hit records, neighborhood MCs were becoming stars, and the sound of New York was about to change the world.

Soon, Kane would redefine the art of MCing with Long Live the Kane and “Ain’t No Half-Steppin’,” while Biz would become one of hip-hop’s most beloved originals with “Vapors” and “Just a Friend.” Behind those records was a friendship far more complicated than the public knew.

Funny, intimate, and alive with the vanished New York that made them, Just Rhymin’ With Biz is both a vivid portrait of an extraordinary friendship and a firsthand account of hip-hop coming of age.