You know, the riots and the burning down of the neighborhoods and the cities as a result of the disproportionate racial injustice in black communities and towards black people that has been going on since as far back as we can remember.
It's a full circle addressing of what the condition of Black people has always been. Was that influenced just by the general condition of black people or by the specific moment after George Floyd? You go right from that to “The Purge”, which I guess would be considered a science record. That introduction on the new record is pretty epic, with Chris Rock then Rakim. And I did not feel that nowhere the way I feel it at Empire Records, with Ghazi and Fuzzy and Peter. It also felt important to me to see the comfort, the enthusiasm, the excitement, the balls to the wall desire that my support system had to really wanna treat this with the care and the nurturing that it deserved. I got a label deal over there with OT Genesis, but I knew how valuable this work was. I tried to do business at Atlantic Records. I tried to do business at Epic Records, I tried to do business at Ca$h Money. Some of those expenses had to be covered by our people that I was trying to do business with. I'm not saying that I haven't gotten financial support along the way, but I paid for the legal stuff, clearing samples and paying producers. This is the first album that I've spent all of my money on recording, from the first penny to the last penny.Ībsolutely.
What took so damn long?īusta Rhymes: Circumstances and my level of comfort and trust with who was being presented as options for me to be in business with, that I would have to actually give this body of work to. GQ: I can tell from when you played it for me that you're extremely proud of this album. On Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God, his new, ninth solo album that he’s been working on for the better part of a decade, Busta Rhymes is very much himself, perhaps more than ever. It’s the undiluted tone and texture of Busta’s voice that keep him in the conversation all these years later. In the legendary drummer and Tonight Show bandleader’s case, that moment was hearing Busta when he was still a member of Leaders of the New School, particularly on “Case of the P.T.A.” “When I talk about mind-blowing, I’m talking about where you have to stop what you’re doing and look at the speaker.” “I call it that Orson Welles War of the Worlds moment,” says Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of the Roots. Even in the old folks’ home, as all your other memories slip away, the nurse will play “Woo Hah!!” for you on a holographic iPhone 40, and you’ll say: “Oh, yeah. Busta Rhymes is blessed with one of those voices. Some voices are as indelible in your memory as cranberry juice on a white T-shirt.