Biz Markie — the Clown Prince of Hip Hop, the Juice Crew’s beatboxing showman, the man behind “Just a Friend” — was a lot of things. Rapper, actor, DJ, and one of the most joyful collectors this culture has ever produced: records, sneakers, toys, you name it. When he passed in July 2021, hip hop lost a true original. But years earlier, Biz gave turntable culture one of its greatest flexes: the only pair of custom Technics 45 turntables on the planet.
Biz Markie in Washington, D.C., 2001. Photo by Mika Väisänen via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
The day the internet lost its mind
Summer 2013. Every year, New York’s SummerStage park series — the Tools of War Crotona Park Jams in the Bronx — brings hip hop’s founders and heroes out to rock for the people, from Grandmaster Caz to Kid Capri. That July, Biz Markie showed up with something nobody had ever seen: a prototype pair of Technics SL-700s — custom-built, straight-arm turntables designed to play 7-inch 45s and nothing else. Photos hit the internet and DJs everywhere collectively lost their minds. As one report put it at the time, these were “the Technics that rocked the internet.”
What made them special
Everything about the SL-700s was custom — the platter, the case, the tonearm — all purpose-built to accommodate 45 rpm 7-inch records. The standard Technics 1200 is a 12-inch deck; these were shrunk and re-engineered around the 45, the format Biz loved most. He was a legendary 45 collector and a DJ who understood that some of the funkiest music ever pressed lives on seven inches of vinyl. A deck built only for 45s wasn’t just gear — it was a love letter to the format.
Who built them
The details were always a little mysterious, which only added to the legend. Word around the decks was that they’d been in the works for years and were custom made for Biz in Japan, with a straight-arm modification added by another company. Technics never confirmed anything about producing them — as far as the company was concerned, these were a one-off, just for the Biz. And Biz said it himself on Twitter: he had the only two pairs of SL-700s in the world. Period.
Press play and pour one out — an hour of the Biz, mixed with love:
Why they matter
The SL-700s never went into production. Estimates at the time figured they’d run near a grand apiece if they ever did — and in the middle of a full-blown 45 revival, the demand was absolutely there. But they stayed a one-off, which is exactly why they matter. In an era when everyone said vinyl was dead and the CDJ had won, here was a hip hop legend commissioning brand-new, custom-built Technics hardware for the humblest format in the crates. It was a statement: the culture doesn’t follow trends, it follows love.
Nobody beats the Biz
Biz Markie spent his life collecting the things he loved and sharing them with everybody — the records, the laughs, the routines, the pure joy of it. The SL-700s are the perfect symbol of that spirit: nobody else on earth had them, because nobody else on earth was Biz. Rest in peace to the Diabolical Biz Markie — beatboxer, hitmaker, digger, and forever the king of the 45s.
Read the original 2013 coverage at The Vinyl Factory and Flea Market Funk. And for more mixes, remixes, and live shows, subscribe to Djaytiger on YouTube.
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