Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Busta Rhymes, take three (last one, I promise!)

Here's our final confirmation that we all need to collectively agree to stop listening to Busta Rhymes. I promise this is the last Busta post. Unless the guy kills someone or cries on The Oprah Winfrey Show or something.

One caveat, though: "Woo-Hah" will still remain in my top three start up songs when I play for the big leagues. Oh what was that you asked? The other two? That would be Beatnuts' "Watch Out Now" and Shyne's "Bad Boys." And if all those fail, I'll take Black Rob's "Woah," which is really the poor man's "Bad Boys."

Via Vibe Magazine via Nah Right:
"After signing with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment in 2004—this after selling more than four million records during a 10-year run at Elektra and a brief stint with J Records—Busta shed his dreads, shaving them in a ceremonious video clip.

“It was time to get fresh and new,” he said at the time. But when he lost his hair, he lost something else, too— his vibrant, playful persona. He was also bulking up, prompting speculation that he might be on steroids. Busta was going gangsta, at least according to his lyrics and the headlines.

Ramirez’s murder seemed to complete Busta’s transformation. Even the threat of a grand jury subpoena couldn’t get him to talk. He was defiant, but the cops stayed on his case, and he seemed to be cracking under the stress."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am surprised there has not been stronger attention paid to the archetypal elements contained in the Busta Rhymes stories you have reported. As a prototypical protagonist partaking on an epic hero quest, he has faced the temptation of mammon and descended into the dark realms. Of course, the removal of his dreadlocks hearkens to the Biblical tale of Sampson, increasing the emasculating aspects of this follicle alteration. Yet, a deeper implication of the act is how it serves as a radical distancing of his Woo-Ha persona. Eliminating his locks eliminates the image of Busta as crazed minstrel, shucking and jiving to the delight of frat brothers everywhere. Unfortunately, as the Vibe article suggests, the new Busta identity is a persona just as damaging with its gangsta posturing.

The_Writer said...

Hmmm. I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that you just finished teaching "Romeo and Juliet" and have moved on to "The Odyssey."

Laura said...

Man, I had that same idea: what song would I play for warmups when I'm in the big leagues? I think I'd want to shake things up and go for something from the baroque or romantic periods though.