Dre, Em Team With Embattled Busta

Busta Rhymes spent three years putting the pieces together for The Big Bang, his first new album since 2002, due April 25th.

First, he inked a deal with Dr. Dre's Aftermath label and worked on twenty songs with Dre. Then he brought in other top producers like the Neptunes, Timbaland, Scott Storch and Just Blaze to work on tracks, and lined up guests including Stevie Wonder, the late Rick James, Missy Elliott, Mariah Carey and Eminem. He says he had 170 songs by the time he released the album's first single, "Touch It," in late 2005. Then tragedy struck. At a February 5th video shoot, Rhymes' bodyguard Israel Ramirez was shot and killed as Rhymes stood nearby.

"Everything I'm doing from this day forward is dedicated to Israel," says Rhymes, who has pledged to support Ramirez's family but so far has refused to cooperate with a police investigation.

A final lineup for the album has not been set, but Rhymes says a handful of tracks are for certain. The next single, "This How We Do It Over Here," was produced by Dr. Dre and features Elliott. "It's specifically constructed to smash every club in existence," Rhymes says. He's also proud of "Into the Storm," which features Wonder's vocals, and the Dre-produced "Your Time Has Come."

"Dre put the track together using the sound of a shovel going into dirt, dirt being poured onto a coffin and a heartbeat as the drum sound," Rhymes says. "It's about karma coming back to haunt you."