There are few topics more consistently represented in popular music than love. We ache for a good love song–they narrate our relationships, articulate the feelings we cannot, and crystalize memories we never want to forget. Historically, the love song has been simple, almost formulaic, either celebrating a love just found or grieving over a love long lost. Songwriters made millions by constantly finding new ways to say “I love you” or “I miss you.” After a few smash hits, however, hip-hop turned the love song formula on its head, introducing new ideas about what was fair in love and rap. Comparing two of hip-hop’s definitive love songs, LL Cool J’s “I Need Love” and Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend,” highlights why the genre’s takes on matters of the heart have been so distinct, popular, and memorable.

LL Cool J’s “I Need Love” is widely credited as rap’s first love ballad. It’s a slow, sugary soliloquy in which LL bares his soul to a girl he hasn’t found yet, promising that he’s done playing games and is looking for someone special to give his heart (and body). The record is almost cartoonish by today’s standards–it seems like L is trying to catch hip-hop up to a century’s worth of romance cliches, with couplets like “You can scratch my back, we’ll get cozy and cuddle/I’ll lay down my jacket so you can walk over a puddle” grasping for heartstrings a little too eagerly. Hip-hop’s first interpretation of the love song played by the rules, delivering all the sentimental lovie-dovie lines that Hallmark could print. Things really got interesting two years later, when a stocky Queens native with a heavy tongue said things a bit more bluntly.

“Have you ever met a girl that you tried to date, but a year to make love she wanted you to wait?” Biz Markie asks at the opening of “Just A Friend.” The question is rhetorical: before we can answer, he launches into his narrative about “Blah Blah Blah,” an interest of his who has banished him to the friend-zone. The song’s hinge is the ambiguity of the term “friend”; throughout, Biz’s girl refers to another guy in her life as “just a friend,” and leaves Biz to either take the situation as is or move on. He begrudgingly presses on, never quite sure of his position, and ultimately suffers an epic loss after catching a fella tongue-kissing his girl in the mouth. Its pulse is its infamous hook, during which Biz Markie croaks out his plea to the lady of his dreams. Unfortunately, he never gets a response.

“Just A Friend” probably shares equal amounts of hip-hop lore with “I Need Love,” with both remembered as landmark records in the genre’s history  and nostalgia-inducing relics of past youths. But “Just A Friend” bears a certain cultural stickiness, a pop persistence that has remained to this day. It’s simply more human than its glitzy, perfume-scented sibling, depicting a real relationship for all its complexities, inconsistencies, heartache, and humor. LL Cool J is a shirtless, lip-licking, budding sex icon. His delivery is polished, his mix is flawless and his lyrics read like the world’s greatest personal ad. Biz Markie, however, produces something a little rougher. His words slur, his rhymes are uncertain, and his singing is God awful. “Just A Friend,” for all its unorthodox sounds and silly visuals, was much like an actual relationship. It was spontaneous, challenging, infectious, confusing, fun, and unforgettable.

Most significant about “Just A Friend,” particularly when held against “I Need Love,” is that Biz rewrote the love song formula that had previously dominated popular music. The song wasn’t idealistic, it was realistic, and set the precedent for hip-hop’s often left-of-center perspective on love. Its success as a crossover pop record evinced that there was a mass desire for a new voice singing the love song, one that would tackle it with genuine emotion and earthly prose, instead of the overworked cliches that LL had parroted in “Love.” Its emphatic energy, scathing bluntness and proud defiance of pop norms completely embodied hip-hop’s golden standards: originality and authenticity at all costs. “Friend” was a song that only hip-hop could get away with, and its blasts from speakers to this day because while we may not all find the love we need, we’ve all most certainly had a friend. Biz was just the first to admit it.