From what I’ve been able to piece together, Dan The Beatman (aka DJ Danny Dan who made a record for Select with his girlfriend, The Female Dream) made the original beat and recorded it with Paul C. at 1212 Studios (as told to Big Daddy magazine for issue 12):
Could this YouTube upload of an acetate be that first recording?
In Chairman Mao’s Power Play Studios: An Oral History, DJ Doc discusses re-recording the Danny Dan / Paul C. demo:
Ivan ‘DJ Doc’ Rodriguez: Everything fell in my lap [because] I was the one that would rewrite the music or clean it up. We used to get stuff on 2″ tape that may have come from some other studio that the timing wasn’t good. Maybe the audio was rough. It wasn’t crystal clear. So we’d have to find ways to repair those issues. [Biz Markie’s] “Just A Friend” was initially recorded somewhere in Jersey, I think. I wasn’t there. But when it came to me [at Power Play], I took it apart and that’s why when you hear it drop, the low-end on it is monstrous. I had a lot of experience when I went on the road [as a DJ for Boogie Down Productions]. I toured, so I knew what speakers in stadiums sounded like, and I said, “I can use this to my advantage when I mix records.” I can make them sound a certain way on a regular stereo or radio AM/FM, but that same song has sub-harmonics, so when it’s put through a huge system it’s gonna sound huge. And that’s why Biz hired me. He said, “I want that double bass that you do for KRS and I want you to do it for me.”
[I remember] one day waking up and watching [American] Top 40 countdown with Casey Kasem, and all of sudden Bruce Springsteen gets knocked down by Biz Markie, and that’s my song that’s knocked him down, “Just a Friend.” I was in shock. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, look – we’re number one above this guy.” A hip-hop song.
This all seems believable enough. If Biz was recording the rest of The Biz Never Sleeps at Power Play with Doc, it makes sense that he would want the whole thing to sound consistent. The song was credited to Biz Markie as the producer and Cutmaster Cool V as co-producer, with Doc assigned as ‘Mix Engineer’, which was the standard arrangement for any Biz stuff from that era.
But then in 2002, Amir Said published The BeatTips Manual, which featured the most extensive interview with Marley Marl I’ve ever read. The Engineer All-Star mentioned that he was actually the producer behind the song, and that it was the last thing he created before leaving Cold Chillin’:
But to add even more fuel to the speculation fire, someone by the name of Karma (not to be confused with the graphic designer from Traffic Entertainment who worked on all of those Juice Crew expanded editions) was interviewed for Vibe magazine in July 2005 and claimed that while working as ‘a staff record producer for Cold Chillin’ Records’ he actually made ‘Just A Friend’ for Biz! Sadly, the Vibe online archive was sold-off to a digital research portfolio company so I couldn’t read the original piece.
Who knows what really went down. Maybe Marley had remade the beat from the original demo for Biz, and then Doc recorded the third and final version? Anyway, here’s the late, great man himself performing the song at The Apollo in 1990, in all his Dapper Dan glory.