Busta Rhymes sharpens la guillotine for new album ‘Blockbusta’: Review

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Three days ago, Busta Rhymes, one of my favourite rappers from my elementary school during his solo reign (1996’s ‘The Coming’), released a new album with playback value called ‘Blockbusta’, possibly an ode to the billion dollar video rental store from the eighties and a play on his name. The effortlessly-laid nineteen-track LP is executive produced by his longtime friends and super-producers Pharrell Williams, Timbaland, and Swizz Beatz. Bringing the legendary Hip-Hop act to the 2020s with outstanding features from the new school superstars like Quavo, Young Thug, and Kodak Black, it is the launchpad that a star of his stature needed and could land due to his incredible talent, impressive collaboration with Chris Brown (‘Look at Me Now’ with nearly 400 million streams on Spotify) and some of them probably wanting to fulfill one of their childhood dreams.

On ‘Luxury Life’ with Coi Leroy, the pair tag team Brooklyn’s finest JAY-Z and Foxy Brown’s 1996 classic ‘Ain’t No Nigga’. Via ‘Big Everything’ with DaBaby, Busta Rhymes reminds his audience of his iconic tongue-twister delivery on Diplo and Afrojack’s viral producer, this time over production originally made for Bun B’s ‘Get Throwed’ featuring Pimp C, Young Jeezy, JAY-Z, and Z-Ro. Easing into the album with Jamaican Patois, Afro-Fusion global superstar Burna Boy joins him to [talk that] talk about choppers, diamonds, and someone losing their ability to stand up. I enjoyed every record on the album, but my absolute favourites are the opening track ‘The Statement’, ‘OK’, ‘Could It Be You’, ‘Open Wide’, ‘Hold Up’, ‘Homage’, ‘Slide’, Ghanian-American artist Blackway’s contribution to ‘The Return of Mansa Musa’ and ‘Slide’ with the unexpected Mystikal vocal sample—the fifty-three-year-old rapper is in jail since July 2022 for imple criminal damage to property; false imprisonment; domestic abuse, battery, and strangulation; simple robbery; and first-degree rape. According to his Wikipedia page, “If convicted, he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.”

There’s something for almost everyone on the album (generational and taste); to me, it was an intelligent decision, and every record is a banger–making me feel like we still can make albums without skips in 2023 and beyond. Check out the stellar project below to hear how Blxst and Yung Bleu flip the same beat Miguel and J Cole owned on ‘All I Want Is You’ and the nostalgic choice of delivery for Busta Rhymes and Big Tigger’s outro (‘If You Don’t Know Now You Know). #Solid

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