When it came time for his 11th studio album, Busta Rhymes turned to some of his mates. When you’re on his level, your mates just happen to include Swizz Beats, Pharrell Williams and Timbaland, who were executive producers on Blockbusta, along with Rhymes himself.
On Friday, the 52-year-old released the music video for Legacy, which features three of his six adult children Cie, Trillian and Rai. He gives a shout out to T’ziah, T’Khi and Sacario – his other children – at the end of the track.
Rhymes is heading back to Australia in October for the first time in almost 15 years. He was last here for Supafest in 2011. This time around he’ll perform at Promiseland on the Gold Coast, followed by live shows in Sydney and Melbourne.
From a health battle that could have killed him to stories about the golden age of hip hop, we look at the making of hip hop royalty, in anticipation of his visit down under.
Rhymes is known for his lyrical dexterity. But how did he get started?
Trevor George Smith Jr was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jamaican migrant parents, telling Men’s Health last August that his licensed electrical contractor father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and took him out on jobs “routing cables” and “nailing stuff into the walls” when he was just 12 and 13 years old.
“We worked in abandoned buildings in Bed-Stuy with basements flooded with water, with rats and cockroaches running around,” Rhymes told the magazine.
“I didn’t wanna do that. Hell no!”
Rhymes attended George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School in downtown Brooklyn where other famous alumni include the Notorious B.I.G. (aka Biggie Smalls) and Jay-Z.
Untold stories of Biggie and 2Pac
On an episode of All the Smoke with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, Rhymes said, prior to its official release, Biggie had a long queue of people lined up to get copies of his 1994 debut album Ready to Die, which he was giving out in his neighbourhood for free.
When Rhymes asked Biggie what he was doing, he said he was going to make it look like the person who didn’t have his album was the hater.
“It was the illest way of thinking at the time because it was brilliant marketing,” Rhymes said, adding that DJs got promotional material anyway, so why not the streets?
Rhymes went on to reveal that the bars Biggie spits on the track Dangerous MC’s, which is on his 1999 posthumous album Born Again, were recorded in front of him at a studio session he’d booked.
He says the verse contained a 2Pac (Tupac Shakur) diss, which Rhymes chose not to release because he was friends with both rappers, and didn’t want to fan any flames.
“My relationship with ‘Pac was super-duper beautiful,” he told Barnes and Jackson.
“Biggie and me was closer than me and ‘Pac.
“But my relationship with ‘Pac was incredible.”
Rhymes said he had some insight others don’t and feels it’s regrettable that Biggie and 2Pac became the faces of the East Coast-West Coast beef in the 1990s, because things weren’t as they seemed, with Rhymes privy to the “real dynamics” of what was going on.
He said it was important to keep the legacies of both men alive.
“Those dudes were both heroes to me,” he said.
‘I do want to cry’: Recognition brings star to tears
Rhymes has been active in the hip hop world since the late 1980s, and while his verse on the 1991 track Scenario by A Tribe Called Quest caught the attention of the streets, Rhymes was not yet a solo artist, but part of the group Leaders of the New School, with whom he released two albums.
On Off Air with Big Boy, Rhymes said he discovered he was dropped from the group while on a movie set.
“I found out that I was kicked out the group while I was in LA shooting Higher Learning,” he said.
Rhymes was at first anxious about going solo. But his debut solo album The Coming was certified platinum in the US and peaked at number six on the Billboard 200, and went to number one on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.
He is 12-time Grammy nominated, making him one of the most nominated artists who has never won a Grammy. But the Recording Academy has never really got hip hop.
Crucially, Rhymes has the respect of his peers.
He received a standing ovation when awarded the BET Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023, the same year the world was celebrating 50 years of hip hop.
“I’mma wear it on my sleeve,” he told the crowd.
“I do want to cry.”
He then removed his sunglasses and wiped away tears.
His hits include Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check (1996), Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See (1997) and his collaboration with the Pussycat Dolls Don’t Cha (2005) is his most-streamed song on Spotify. Rhymes has worked with many other artists including Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey.
How did he get his name?
Known also by the nickname Bus-a-Bus, Rhymes got his moniker from another hip hop legend – Public Enemy’s Chuck D, who named Rhymes after the NFL wide receiver George “Buster” Rhymes because, he said, there was a resemblance.
Given his name also works as a double entendre for an artist who busts rhymes, it’s a name that’s stuck.
Is Busta Rhymes the fastest rapper in the world?
Believe it or not, this is something that has been studied. Rhymes is capable of averaging about 143 words per minute. This is incredibly fast and puts him in league with the speediest rappers of all time. Just listen to Break Ya Neck or his verse on Chris Brown’s Look At Me Now.
While his rapid-fire delivery would leave most breathless, Eminem and Twista are considered slightly faster, both having been crowned at different times the fastest rapper in history in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Rhymes told All the Smoke that he was prompted to speed rap, after hearing his first example of it when Papa San and Lieutenant Stitchie battled it out in 1986.
In 1993, Rhymes gave it a go himself on the second Leaders of the New School album on a track called Daily Reminder.
