{"id":3119,"date":"2020-11-30T01:00:42","date_gmt":"2020-11-30T06:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/read.streamapse.com\/?p=3119"},"modified":"2025-06-18T19:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T00:04:08","slug":"busta-rhymes-three-decades-deep-in-the-game-busta-bus-has-fire-for-all-comers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=3119","title":{"rendered":"Busta Rhymes – Three Decades Deep In The Game, Busta Bus Has Fire For All Comers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The original Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front album, released in 1998, is possibly the most revered Busta Rhymes album in a catalog that includes many greats. E.L.E. 1 made good on the increasingly bombastic delivery and cutting-edge aesthetic Bus delivered with When Disaster Strikes, pushing the MC\u2019s star further into the pop stratosphere while supplying canonical entries like \u201cGimme Some More\u201d and \u201cWhat\u2019s It Gonna Be?!\u201d To deliver its sequel, then\u2014some 22 years later and also after a near decade-long album hiatus\u2014would mean that Busta holds this latest work in the very highest esteem, believing that over the course of a now three-decade-long career, his music-making ability hasn\u2019t wavered a bit. Luckily for us, nobody knows Busta better than he does.<\/p>\n

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StreamExtinctionLevelEvent2:TheWrathOfGodReloaded<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2020, an album like Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God could only have come from its creator. Busta\u2019s sonic palate spans the many eras he\u2019s been active, and the album\u2019s production includes touchstones from nearly all of them. From \u201cE.L.E. 2 Intro,\u201d we get an Ahmad Jamal Trio piano line familiar to most hip-hop heads as a part of Nas\u2019 \u201cThe World Is Yours.\u201d \u201cOutta My Mind\u201d boasts a sample of Bell Biv DeVoe\u2019s \u201cPoison\u201d chopped so well that we have no choice but to forgive Busta for dismantling one of the most beloved new jack swing songs of all time. The sprightly Mariah Carey collaboration \u201cWhere I Belong\u201d is basically a continuation of their \u201cI Know What You Want,\u201d a high point of both of their careers.<\/p>\n

Collaboration, in fact, is a cornerstone of Extinction Level Event 2. The list of featured artists reads like a guest list for a Busta Rhymes birthday party: Rakim, Pete Rock, M.O.P., Q-Tip, Rick Ross, Anderson .Paak, Vybz Kartel, Mariah Carey, Kendrick Lamar, Rapsody, Mary J. Blige. There\u2019s even a previously unheard Ol\u2019 Dirty Bastard verse and a sample of young Michael Jackson. Busta\u2019s role here, of course, is elite-level MCing in the East Coast tradition, and he gives as much as he gets from his guests, trotting out a plethora of flows over the project\u2019s 22 tracks. Busta superfan Chris Rock appears throughout the album but uses the intro to \u201cCzar\u201d to speak to who he feels Busta Rhymes is to hip-hop at large: \u201cThere ain\u2019t no place in the world where Busta Rhymes ain\u2019t the baddest motherfucker!\u201d Rock shouts. \u201cDo you understand who this man is? Do you understand how hard he brings it?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The original Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front album, released in 1998, is possibly the most revered Busta Rhymes album in a catalog that includes many greats. E.L.E. 1 made good on the increasingly bombastic delivery and cutting-edge aesthetic Bus delivered with When Disaster Strikes, pushing the MC\u2019s star further into the pop stratosphere […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3121,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[325,326,327,328,329],"class_list":["post-3119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-busta","tag-comers","tag-decades","tag-rhymes","tag-three"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6209,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119\/revisions\/6209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}