I Need a Haircut

The album forever changed the hip-hop industry due to the album's 12th track, "Alone Again".[5][8] Biz was served a lawsuit by Gilbert O'Sullivan because "Alone Again" contained an unauthorized sample from O'Sullivan's 1972 song, "Alone Again (Naturally)".[9] The resulting case was Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc., in which the court granted an injunction against the defendants to prevent further copyright infringement of the plaintiff's song by sampling and referred them for criminal prosecution.[10] The judgment changed the hip hop music industry, requiring that any future music sampling be pre-approved by the original copyright owners to avoid a lawsuit. Biz would poke fun at his misfortunes, titling his next album All Samples Cleared![11]

After Cold Chillin' ended its deal with Warner, the album was re-pressed without the illegal track.

The original vinyl from Gilbert O'Sullivan's album "Back to front", on which Biz sampled "Alone Again (Naturally)", can still be found today at the Médiathèque Musicale de Paris, a specialized music library located in Paris. Biz Markie visited the library during a trip to Paris in 1991 in search of samples for his album. At the time, the establishment was renowned among American and French hip-hop artists for its extensive collection of vinyl records available for self-service access.[12]

Trouser Press called I Need a Haircut "a fairly diverting record that could have been suppressed on the basis of good taste."[13] Billboard wrote that the "delivery here is rhythmically slack and mush-mouthed, and production values are skimpy."[1] The Indianapolis Star wrote: "Markie wants his humor to have bite, but his jokes never go beyond intentionally singing off-key and a recurring I-told-you-so admonishment to ex-friends who never thought Markie would make it big."[14] The Calgary Herald wrote that Markie is "entertainin' enough but after a while his one- dimensional thumping-as-music and five-minute listing of friends becomes dull."[3]

1. "To My Boys" – 5:10
2. "Road Block" – 3:56
3. "Let Go My Eggo" – 3:54
4. "What Comes Around Goes Around" – 4:05
5. "Romeo and Juliet" – 3:42
6. "Toilet Stool Rap" – 2:34
7. "Busy Doing Nuthin’" – 3:53
8. "I Told You" – 3:55
9. "Buck Wild" – 4:31
10. "Kung Fu" – 5:00
11. "Take it from the Top" – 6:44
12. "Alone Again" – 2:54 (see Sampling lawsuit)
13. "On and On" – 2:38