Busta Rhymes – Back On My B.S.

Posted: Thursday – May 28, 2009

[ratings id=”503″]
Whenever I hear someone say “that guy is back on his bullshit,” I usually think that person is doing what they usually do. Maybe it’s what they’re good at. So when I first heard Busta Rhymes was renaming his album to Back On My B.S., I thought I would be hearing an album in the same vein as The Coming or Extinction Level Event because he had two singles called We Made It featuring Linkin Park and Don’t Touch Me. I thought we were in for another Busta Rhymes classic. Then I heard the single Respect My Conglomerate. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a hot song. The way Busta flows and the video (rappers seem to really want to be in a mob) was tight. But this is not the Busta people want to see.

What a lot of people liked about Big Bang was, for the first time, Busta Rhymes gave a little incite about his life that he never did before on the track Been Thru The Storm. I thought this was going to be a new trend for him. When rappers get older, sometimes they become a little more introspective. This was not the case on Back On My B.S. Nothing really works on this album, from the cliche features with T-Pain and Ron Browz to the empty sounding production. This heavily featured album seems to not know what direction it was trying to take. For instance the song We Want In sounds like a remix of Pop Champagne without any of the original rappers.

There is no problem with trying to keep up with the times, but it should not influence your music this much. Now on tracks like Kill Dem, where he does his Jamaican flow, and Don’t Believe Em with Akon and T.I., Busta seems like he’s redefined. This is where his flow, his style, features, and production is on point. The song Decision, although needing three superstar singers and Common, Busta Rhymes comes with that introspective feel that is nice to groove to, backed by pianos. This is where the album shines. But it is songs like Shoot For The Moon, Hustler’s Anthem 09, and Give Em What They Askin For, that really dulls the album back to average.

What this album really lacks is replay value. A majority of his songs are forgettable. And the tracks where he reaches for humor, such as I’m A Go and Get My, are just not funny. Then like I said before, there is nothing wrong with trying to keep up with the times, but tracks like Arab Money just have way too much Auto-Tune to tolerate. The reason why Big Bang worked was because everything seemed to mesh well. Nothing on it seemed forced. This isn’t the case for Back On My B.S. For anyone who thought Don’t Touch Me was a hint as to what Busta Rhymes was going to offer us, you will be sadly mistaken. What we have is a confused record and maybe a confused artist who needs to find his niche again. There comes a time when the elite rappers may have to gracefully bow out; maybe Busta’s time is coming soon.

– By Hakim Hill

Source: Yoraps.com