The 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards were held in Los Angeles on Sunday night (September 19) and featured an unexpected tribute to the late Biz Markie.
Early on in the ceremony, LL COOL J, Cedric, Lil Dickey and Tom Hanks’ wife Rita Wilson did a medley of Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend” but injected their own lyrics into the hit song. Meanwhile, people in the audience such as Tracee Ellis-Ross and Anthony Anderson danced and sang along to the Hip Hop classic.
The Juice Crew legend passed away on July 16 following a year-long battle with diabetes complications, and the Hip Hop community is certainly still feeling the loss.
Twitter soon erupted with applause for the Biz honor with comments such as “What a way to celebrate to Biz Markie” and “This Biz Markie tribute is awesome.”
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Of course, not everybody was feeling it. As one person noted, “I bet half these people don’t even know who Biz Markie is,” while others noted they didn’t mention Biz Markie’s contributions to the popular Emmy Award-winning children’s show Yo Gabba Gabba.
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The “Clown Prince of Hip Hop” toured with a live rendition of the show for several years in addition to appearing on multiple episodes, prompting one person to write, “A tribute to Biz Markie without any reference to his multiple televised performances on Yo Gabba Gabba feels real fakey at a tv awards show.”
But again, the reactions to the Emmy’s Biz Markie tribute were overwhelmingly mixed, although most people seemed to agree acknowledging the Biz at all was a win for Hip Hop culture — no matter how many “white women” were twerking during the performance.
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Check out some of the reactions below.
