Popscreen: Busta Rhymes

Busta Rhymes

“Touch It (Remix)”

Dir. Benny Boom



Oh, please, please don’t let Busta Rhymes be remembered as the “Don’t Cha” rapper. One of the best hip-hop singles artist of the last ten years, the 33-year-old ex-Leader of the New School/Native Tongues badass/Grand Inquisitor of the Scenario/Co-Keeper of Y’all in Check/General Director of Hands Placement for Visual Optimization/Executive Breaker of Necks/Ordained Minister of Courvoisier Passage/Professor Emeritus of Lighting Ya Ass On Fire finally sounds a little tired.

And while I wish more rappers were able to hold down a steady career after hitting 30, it probably isn’t going to happen for the Flipmode founder.

Producer Swizz Beatz samples Daft Punk’s song “Technologic” for the chorus, but in this case, the song is less “sampled” than it is enslaved and forced to work long, grueling hours on a plantation which grows bad beats and which is owned by the Ying Yang Twins. The video is barely worth mentioning, aside from the quick “Follow the Leader” video homage at the beginning of the third verse. Women love Busta, Busta can rap and drive at the same time, and Busta wears outlandish clothes and has crazy tattoos. I’m not positive, but I do believe that all of these are well-known, well-documented principles of natural law and do not need to be reprised in a badly-lit, unnecessarily-subtitled, run-of-the-mill music video. And the remix artists are either over-the-hill (DMX, Rah Digga, Missy Elliot), or just unnecessary (Lloyd Banks, Papoose).

This video has, justifiably, gotten more publicity because of the shooting death of one of Busta’s bodyguards during filming than for its content. While it is unfortunate that Israel Ramirez’s murder has been exploited by the Bill O’Reilly crowd as part of a larger attack on hip-hop, the fact that the video itself is being overlooked is not such a bad thing.

—J. Samuel Abbott