To that end, he used Clive's money to hire A-list producers such as Dr. Dre, The Neptunes, Pete Rock, Diamond D, whose beats are mixed in with those from Battlecat, a post- The Blueprint but pre-everything else Just Blaze, and his frequent collaborator, the late Jay Dee, also known as J. The guest roster was kept to a minimum; Busta even managed to downplay his own Flipmode Squad's contributions as a way to force the spotlight upon himself.
Dj Kay Slay Rhyme Or Die Rar Files. With Busta heading his first collective effort. Anarchy, released in 2. Busta Rhymes it was certified platinum in. 'Man Made': A Film About Transgender Bodybuilders; And About Everyone Else, Too.
The free press guaranteed by including Dr. Dre on your album (on three tracks) pushed to the forefront of the rap scene for a short time in 2001, and its hit singles dominated radio airwaves for a time. Busta would like everyone to believe that the title of this project,, represents his first venture on a new record label and not, in fact, the rebuilding process of the planet after the end of the world, which he had preached about at great length throughout his first four solo albums. Well, it's kind of hard to forget the Busta Rhymes who kept shouting things like “There's only five years left!” and “Holy fuck everybody's going to die when these computers rise up!”. This introductory track (which isn't technically the rap album intro, but our host announces it as such toward the end) doesn't do much to encourage his fans to rise up: Just Blaze's uncharacteristically low-key instrumental is more suited to cleaning your house than it is for inciting a riot, and none of Trevor's verses stick out. Busta Rhymes brings in production duo The Neptunes for a song-length homage to his own performance on the classic A Tribe Called Quest posse cut “Scenario”. Unfortunately, comparisons between that track and “As I Come Back” are generated automatically as a result, and it's difficult to ignore that the Busta who roared “like a dungeon dragon” as a part of the Leaders Of The New School was much hungrier than the Trevor Smith that shit-talks his way through a blingy beat that doesn't sound as though it would have done well in the clubs or on the radio.
Confession time: I liked this song back in 2001, mainly because of The Neptunes, whose early production work I'm still a fan of, and I still think the music itself is alright. But our host is coasting: he doesn't sound excited to be rapping anymore, and that lack of enthusiasm extends to the listener, who will be bored to tears with this. Whoever placed a Pete Rock production immediately after a Neptunes beat should be drawn and quartered in the town square, or at the very least tied to the pommel horse that inexplicably exists in that weird-ass town Kurt Thomas has to run through in Gymkata, but you should all be thankful that “Shut 'Em Down 2002” exists in the first place, as this is the most rejuvenated I've heard Busta Rhymes sound since the days when he was in the running for Hip Hop Cameo King.
Rockefeller deserves the bulk of the credit, as his horn-heavy instrumental (almost a direct lift of his work on his remix for Public Enemy's “Shut 'Em Down”) is a keeper, evoking just the right amount of hip hop nostalgia right at the point when the listener may have given up hope. The horrific singing from the interlude that separates “Shut 'Em Down 2002” from this title track plays the role of its chorus, but in a “we recorded these sounds while trapped in a haunted house”-kind of way, as was producer J. Dilla's intention. The late beatsmith lends frequent collaborator Busta with a quasi-experimental, and fairly engrossing, creation, and our host, a man who should be going out of his way to collect all of the most unorthodox beats in the land, as he is one of the few artists in our chosen genre that can actually work with them, excels over it. “Genesis”, with its awful chorus but terrific everything-else, really should have been earmarked as the introductory missive from this project, but rappers tend not to care about the little things such as continuity and how a story flows. Rah Digga was (and forever will be) the most talented member of Busta's ragtag group of misfit rappers, the Flipmode Squad, so giving her some shine on was a no-brainer. But did it have to happen at this exact moment?