Busta Rhymes: The Big Bang : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Busta Rhymes' 2006 has gone from ugly to tragic to just plain wack. First he allegedly knocked Source magazine founder David Mays in the melon with a champagne bottle in Miami in March. Then, during the February video shoot for his comeback smash "Touch It," Rhymes' bodyguard Israel Ramirez was slain. Now, having shaved off his signature dreads and changed labels ("I ain't on J Records/I'm on Dre Records. . . . Aftermath, bitch!" he cries on "Get You Some"), Rhymes appears more moronically misogynous and yayo-crazed than ever. "Real live chicken let her fuck with the thugs/Sip a martini quick and wanna fuck in the club," he rhymes on "I Love My Bitch," and "Cocaina" finds him bragging about "money like a thousand coke deals/From here to Panama." It's Rhymes' old Native Tongues buddy Q-Tip who, while admonishing hip-hop's next generation on "You Can't Hold the Torch" -- "They keep regurgitating the same script/Same hos, same blow, same Glock clip" -- unwittingly describes what Busta's become. Fortunately, the album has its musical moments, particularly Timbaland's drum-line rim shots on "Get Down" and the entwined-like-vines organ and piano of "Goldmine," co-produced by Erick Sermon and Dr. Dre. In the end, though, The Big Bang feels as hollow as a CGI-fueled Hollywood blockbuster, the kind that leaves one wondering why, for all its big-budget effects, the script is so irredeemably lame.