Latest Release
- APR 26, 2024
- 3 Songs
- It Ain't Safe No More... · 2002
- PCD · 2005
- When Disaster Strikes · 1997
- Genesis · 2001
- The Big Bang · 2005
- Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front · 1998
- HOMAGE (feat. Kodak Black) - Single · 2023
- Set The Tone (Guns & Roses) · 2024
- Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front · 1998
- When Disaster Strikes · 1997
Essential Albums
- Like a Venn diagram with dreadlocks, Busta Rhymes was uniquely connected to several intersecting spheres of hip-hop culture in the late '90s. His second album, When Disaster Strikes, brought together some of best minds in underground hip-hop (J Dilla, Easy Moe Bee), neo-soul (Erykah Badu, Anthony Hamilton), and pop (Puff Daddy). The album exudes an easygoing, collaborative ambiance. “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See,” “One,” and “When Disaster Strikes” are three of its most compelling moments, if only for the way they juxtapose relaxed, low-key beats with Busta’s rambunctious delivery.
- In the few years leading up to 1996’s The Coming, Busta Rhymes was everywhere. On A Tribe Called Quest’s “Oh My God,” alongside Biggie and LL Cool J on the remix for Craig Mack’s “Flava in Ya Ear,” on records by TLC and Buju Banton—his energy was so infectious that at a certain point he was getting hired just to talk on people’s albums, as he did on “Intro Talk” from Mary J. Blige’s What’s the 411?: “This is Busta Rhymes, spelled with a A…” His mom said that as a kid he’d reminded her of a little dinosaur: wild, primal, ferocious. With The Coming, we entered his Mesozoic. The album’s center is that voice: raspy, deep, threatening but comical. His parents were Jamaican, and he credited a lot of his performance to the delivery of dancehall: the way flowing with the beat is less important than disrupting and jabbing at it, the way the content of the lyrics is secondary to the percussion of how they hit. “Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check” is era-defining, a bridge between the creaky hardcore of Wu-Tang Clan and the futurism of Missy Elliott and The Neptunes. And while his mania was the selling point (and evolutionary DNA for artists like Ludacris and Tyler, The Creator), The Coming reflects an era when hardcore rap albums—by Biggie, 2Pac, Nas, and others—were taking on a more balanced, pop-oriented shape: the jazzy feel of the Q-Tip collaboration “Ill Vibe,” the moral uplift of “The Finish Line,” the R&B/crossover of “It’s a Party.” “I would like to thank the whole entire world for absorbing such a special moment with Busta Rhymes,” he says on the album’s outro. If not the entire world, he was definitely reverberating way beyond New York.
- 2023
- 2006
- 2001
- 2000
Artist Playlists
- These high-speed raps will have you all in check.
- His rapid-fire raps paved the way for some outrageous club hits.
- His beat selections are graceful and vicious all at once.
- His swerving flows combine the best of rap and dancehall.
Compilations
- 2011
- Honey Bxby
- RJ Payne
- Honey Bxby
- Spoatymac & J Almighty
- Chris Webby
- Renaissance Woman Rosalee
More To Hear
- Dotty celebrates the legendary Brooklyn rapper.
- Busta Rhymes shares his top ten emcees out right now.
- The artist on 'Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God.'
- Swizz Beatz and Busta Rhymes help open the new studio.
- Swizz Beatz, Busta Rhymes, and Teyana Taylor live in studio.
- Josh spins his favorite music and gets philosophical.
- The Abstract drops the vital joints.
About Busta Rhymes
Busta Rhymes’ boisterous bars and uproarious flow have made him one of hip-hop’s most distinctive voices. Born Trevor George Smith Jr. in Brooklyn, New York in 1972, Busta Rhymes began his career as part of the collective Leaders of the New School in 1990. After recording their buoyant 1991 album A Future Without a Past, Busta made a name for himself, beginning with a freewheeling turn on A Tribe Called Quest’s iconic posse cut “Scenario.” His run as a first-pick feature artist throughout the early ‘90s built up to his apocalypse-fearing solo debut The Coming in 1996. Marrying his patois-infused rhymes to an epochal boom bap backdrop, the monster lead single “Woo Hah!! Got You All In Check” epitomized Busta’s controlled frenzy, amplified in his sophomore effort When Disaster Strikes, which featured the career-defining “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See.” Reaching the apogee of syllable manipulation with the minatory bounce of “Gimme Some More” from his lionized 1998 album Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front, Busta burnished his legacy with unruly post-millennium hits “Break Ya Neck” and “Pass the Courvoisier” from 2001’s Genesis. Launching into a third decade on even bolder beats, Busta certified his volcanic reputation as one of the all-time great cameo MCs with Chris Brown’s “Look At Me Now,” a legend he cemented with his full-circle appearances on A Tribe Called Quest’s 2016 final album We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service. In 2020, he dropped his first solo album in eight years, the tempestuous Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God, which echoed the apocalyptic swagger of his earliest works.
- GENRE
- Hip-Hop/Rap