“I never really concerned myself with s**t like that cause, what you gonna do?,” says Busta Rhymes when asked at his inconspicuous absence whenever Top 5 rapper lists are tallied. He continues, “All I know how to do is what I been doing, and at the end of the day that’s smashing mothaf**kas in every way across the board.”

Busta insists there’s no chip on his shoulder, though if he did the claim would be legit. Since his debut to the rap world as a boisterous Leader of the New School, Busta has embarked on a hit laden solo career (“Woo-Hah! (Got You All In Check),” “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See”) that coupled with a full clip of show stealing guest verses (“Flava In Ya Ear (Remix),” “Scenario”) and combustible stage shows has indisputably made Bussa Bus one of Hip-Hop’s top tier artists.

In 2004 Busta signed on with Aftermath Records. Surely working with Dr. Dre would mean a turbo boost in stardom, and sales, right? However, the album was slow to arrive, and despite a huge hit (“Touch It”), his first #1 chart debut, and critical kudos, 2007’s The Big Bang didn’t live up to expectations in the marketplace. Simultaneously issues surrounding the death of his bodyguard, Ismael Ramirez, at the “Touch It” video shoot and various ensuing legal troubles didn’t help matters.

Nevertheless, Busta presses on. In July 2008 he left Interscope and Dr. Dre’s care, eventually landing at Universal/Motown. The label is headed by Sylvia Rhone, who signed Leaders of the New School in 1990. “I’m just back in my comfort zone again,” says Busta of he and Rhone’s reunion. With the success of his controversial hit “Arab Money” he is comfortably back on the charts as well.

With his eighth album, B.O.M.B. (Back On My B.S.), due in March 2009, we asked Busta just about everything. From his legal trouble to what really occurred during his convo with Jimmy Iovine, on to who his favorite producers and MCs are, he answered everything candidly and sincerely. No B.S.

AllHipHop.com: So, now you’re signed to Universal/Motown, it’s almost like you’re coming full circle since Sylvia Rhone is here and your solo career really jumped off at Elektra with her. So what’s that like?

Busta Rhymes: Back on my bulls**t.  You know what I’m saying? We back to getting back to what we used to do, to what we’ve always been able to do together. I’ve never loved any one that I’ve been in business with more than I love this woman.  And I just think that Sylvia is just an extremely loyal person.  She loves really hard and she’s an extremely passionate individual.  She’s always been the type of person where, if you in her good graces she will walk through any storm and any fire with you.

I think this one of the greatest ways to actually press the restart button. I pressed my start button to my solo career with her.  And I went through phases with other situations and I can see the difference in the way things are manifested now as opposed to what they were in my last situation.  We put one record out [“Arab Money”], s**t is on frenzy level everywhere now that I’m back with the person that knows how the do business with the Busta Rhymes brand better than anybody in the game. I’m just back in my comfort zone again, and I’ve always tried to acquire a comfort zone like this for the last five years.  I just wasn’t able to do it. 

Busta Rhymes f/ Ron Browz "Arab Money" Video

AllHipHop.com: That said what made you leave Elektra to J Records.  What was the situation behind that?

Busta Rhymes: Back then, I was in a different space mentally. I felt like the things that me and Sylvia had done together had outgrown that situation. We was a monster that couldn’t fit in the building no more.  Video started off being $600,000 then ended up becoming $2.4 million videos.  Like, where else was there left for us to go? What, we going to start spending three, four million dollars on videos, you know, to outdo [the previous one]?  Everything we did just got so much bigger than the last s**t and that’s what we was about. Me and Sylvia, we just was so dope together that nothing outside of ourselves [was] our competition, you know what I’m saying?  So we was competing with ourselves.

Busta Rhymes "Woo-Hah!" Video

AllHipHop.com: It was definitely crazy video after even crazier video for a while.

Busta Rhymes: It was crazy like nothing couldn’t top what we was doing.  And it just got to a point where we couldn’t top our own s**t. It was time for us to try something else.  And you know it was almost like a defense mech. We had to leave ourselves or we was gonna kill ourselves. Because what we started doing no longer was conducive to proper business practice.  The profit margin started lessening the more we spent. 

It started to cost us more to acquire greater success because we just was creating those movies every time we came back around with a new project. Think about it, first album was with Zhane [“It’s A Party”]. And then When Disaster Strikes had Erykah Badu on “One,” then Janet [Jackson] was Extinction Level Event [“What’s It Gonna Be?”]. It just got bigger and bigger and bigger and s**t was just…it just became too much.  So we had to let each other breathe a little bit, and let somebody else share the burden of trying to maintain the Busta Rhymes success. 

Busta Rhymes "Pass the Courvoisier Part 2" Video

AllHipHop.com: You said you’re in a comfortable situation now. The Aftermath situation started off with great potential and expectations, of course.  What happened?

Busta Rhymes:  Just ummm…the patience that Dr. Dre had was a little difficult for me.  I respect patience, your circumstance can only allow you to have the kind of patience he has.  You know what I’m saying? His circumstances were very different than a lot of us because he’s been successful on an astronomical level for a very long time. As a producer Dre can generate significant amount of revenue without having to be on the front line as an artist.  You know me, my primary revenue stream is being on the front line as an artist. 

So at the end of the day while Dre is perfecting perfection itself, you know, at that level he does things in every way when it comes to music, you sitting around three, four years trying to put an album together. Because nothing is good enough for Dre.  Which was actually a blessing because it ended up making The Big Bang one of my most incredible albums. 

“'I Love My Chick,' that wasn’t a single choice that was made by Busta or Dr. Dre. So when you see the difference, Busta Rhymes put out 'Touch It,' it was a movie. The single that I chose to go with, which Dre was in agreement with was 'Get You Some,' which was a Dr. Dre produced record.”

Touch It - Busta Rhymes

AllHipHop.com: Looking at your discography through the years you were good for a year, year and a half between albums, not to mention all the remixes and guest features.

Busta Rhymes: That’s the pace that I was used to.  That’s how Busta Rhymes does things when Busta Rhymes is in the driver’s seat.  But when I went to his situation you play by different rules because you’re moving into someone’s house who’s had success that superseded your success; doing it his way.  There ain’t been a project that Dre put out that aint do five million, four million, three million. So it’s hard to tell him to do it different, when his way has always worked for him.  And which it probably would have, with my album, if we didn’t compromise what we knew was best for the project.

When I say that I mean sometimes when an exec from a parent company wants you to go in a direction that they want you to go in, and they promise to deliver on those levels where you make that choice and support what they suggest is the decision that you should support. Then if you fight against that and it doesn’t go the way that you want it to go… A lot of the times you may not get the support that you might need.  On The Big Bang album, “I Love My Chick,” that wasn’t a single choice that was made by Busta or Dr. Dre. So when you see the difference, Busta Rhymes put out “Touch It,” it was a movie.  Then we put out the remix, bigger movie.  The single that I chose to go with, which Dre was in agreement with, was “Get You Some,” which was a Dr. Dre produced record with Marsha and Q-Tip.  First song on my album, now after three years of sitting around, there is no possible way that the people are going to want to see an album come out and you not have a Dr. Dre produced record, if you’re on Aftermath with Dr. Dre. 

We’ve already seen what a Dr. Dre produced single with Busta Rhymes on it can do with “Break Ya Neck” when I was on J records.  We put it out and the Genesis album ended up selling 1.9 million albums and that was my first single. So for me to have been at Aftermath/Interscope and not have a Dre single, it just made no sense. But obviously, that wouldn’t be a choice that we would make.  We rolled with the choice of Jimmy Iovine at the time because that’s what he felt we should have done.  And that directly contributed to the change of the momentum of the project. That single wasn’t the right single and I chose to never let a situation like that transpire again.  But you know, we could have also stood our ground and said, Nah we not doing that regardless of what the end result would have been.  But that was then, this is now.

AllHipHop.com: It’s like a double edge sword. You stand your ground and…

Busta Rhymes: You don’t get the support you want.

AllHipHop.com: Right.

Busta Rhymes: And then if you do go with it, you get all the support you want and then you still don’t get it because you know it ain’t the right single, you’re damned either way.  Again, that was then this is now.  And I’m not making those kind of mistakes anymore. But with that being said, I don’t want people to think that there’s any disgruntledness because, I’m not mad at my experience over there.  S**t happens the way they happen because that’s just how it happened.

There was a lot of other s**t that went down in my two years over there that shouldn’t have happened that contributed to a lot of the difficulties of the way things was going on.  The s**t that happened at the video shoot.  You know, just a lot of the negative press with the court cases and the constant getting arrested and it was just…a lot of s**t was going haywire at the time too that was hurting what we was trying to do with the music.  It was just a major anti-Busta Rhymes campaign for a while. 

Busta Rhymes f/ Swizz Beatz "New York S**t" Video

AllHipHop.com: You dropped The Big Bang which received plenty of critical acclaim but then in the months after its release it seemed like every time your name came up in the press it was about anything but music.

Busta Rhymes: You stopped thinking about me having an album, you started thinking about me being a criminal and s**t. In a timeframe when they was putting every one of our Black entertainers in jail, if my charges were that serious I would have been doing some kind of time too.  But none of my charges were serious because, I’m not no criminal, number one.  Number two, situations, more or less were manifesting not as a result of me doing wrong things but as a result of me being dealt with in an unjust manner and being harassed by law enforcement because of the situation that transpired at the video shoot.  Because as you can see for the 16, 17 year career at that time , I never had no problems with nobody.

AllHipHop.com: You can’t say there was a pattern or anything  like that.

Busta Rhymes: Nothing.  And once that situation transpired it was an onslaught of s**t that just started to play out back to back for the last two years, and I’m still dealing with some of it now. But the difference is, you my cases are closed so it ain’t too much they can do with me right now. As far as trying to get me in trouble I don’t have any pending cases, I don’t have no legal issues with nobody. I’m in a new space with a new deal, new album coming, I’m a new person and I’m extremely happy. 

AllHipHop.com: Is there anything final you want to say about the situation at the video and with your late friend Ismael Ramirez? There’s always been a ton of speculation but mostly from people not really familiar with what happened, so is there anything final you want to say about it?

Busta Rhymes:  Nah, there’s really nothing else that I do want to say. I don’t really want to say anything because the bottom line is, you know, I don’t have anything to do with anything concerning that situation other than trying to provide an opportunity for all of us to work and make money ‘cause we were shooting a video.  And again, I just wish for the people that have so much to say about me in the situation…it would serve a greater purpose to not only get the facts and know what you talking about before you talk, but invest the energy that you are putting in in trying to disrespect the situation by continuing to talk based on information that you don’t really have the facts on [and] do something to help the man’s family.

If you really want to do something do something to help the brother’s family; he got three kids, three mother’s of his children and it could be more useful putting whatever energy that you have into being productive, moving forward for the situation. And that’s pretty much it.  And God bless all the loved ones and all those that have been affected directly and indirectly.  I’ve been affected directly and indirectly since the day that it happened more than people realize, and I’m still dealing with those effects, and so is my family so I just kind of want to move forward.

“[Jimmy Iovine] supported me in a way that I never seen before—he let me leave with my album. What more could you ask for? There was no beef whatsoever and that’s not a politically correct answer neither.”

AllHipHop.com: Blessed was originally the title of your next album and you had dropped some songs to prep its release. But is it true that there was an argument between you and Jimmy Iovine that lead to you leaving Interscope and then landing at Universal/Motown?

Busta Rhymes: Nah. That’s another thing that wasn’t accurate. I never had any beef with Jimmy Iovine. We sat down and we communicated our concerns and I communicated not only my concerns but what I would like to do moving forward as far as wanting to make some changes.  And the beautiful thing about Jimmy Iovine that I respect is the fact that he respected my judgment call as far as what my choices were and he also respected the hard work that went into creating the legacy that I have; he didn’t want to do nothing to soil that or stain that.

[Jimmy Iovine] supported me in a way that I never seen before—he let me leave with my album. What more could you ask for? That’s a blessing because a lot of these labels when they give you money to spend on a project, they want they money back in some kind of way.  They want to override or they want you to pay that money back in its entirety. I didn’t have none of that to deal with and I guess it’s because the discussion was dealt with in a respectful manner.

There was no beef whatsoever and that’s not a politically correct answer neither.  We don’t got no problem in getting in somebody’s ass who ain’t doing they job. That’s a M.O. of Hip-Hop artists. A lot of the time the artists beef so much with labels that ain’t doin’ they job that a lot of time you start to think that that’s their mothaf**kin’ excuse for s**t they do sometimes that’s just wack. I ain’t wanna use that as an excuse in this situation because my success wasn’t the greatest over there so I got every reason to pop s**t.  If it was just based on and being about the success of the records, but that’s not really the nature of my situation I really don’t have nothing to be mad about with that experience over there. 

I do wish things could have popped a little crazier as far the success but I would not have changed The Big Bang album for the world.  It’s still one of my if not the favorite album of mine from a lyrical standpoint, a conceptual standpoint, and a musical standpoint.  You know?  “Legends of The Fall Offs”, gravediggin’ beat with the shovel in the dirt, that shit is conceptually…it’s just unbelievable. “You Can’t Hold a Torch,” me and Q-Tip over the J-Dilla beat.  “Don’t Get Carried Away,” me and Nas over the Dre beat. You know “Gold Mine” me and Raekwon over the Erick Sermon beat with the Dre production; Rick James, Stevie Wonder.

AllHipHop.com: It definitely felt like the album should have lasted in the marketplace much longer than it did.  

Busta Rhymes: Yeah. We had a 60-piece orchestra at the end of the Stevie Wonder song. You know it’s like there were movies made on that album and I wouldn’t change it for the world.   The only thing I probably would have changed is “I Love My Chick” would not have been on that album.  I probably would have put “I Love My Chick” on another album that it would have been more appropriate for. 

Busta Rhymes: The AllHipHop Interview, Pt. 2