My Gut Reaction: Busta Rhymes - Year of the Dragon (August 21, 2012)

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The solo career of Trevor “Busta Rhymes” Smith has been a wild rollercoaster ride in a haunted amusement park with structural issues, terrbile parking, and a shortage of funnel cake batter. Setting aside the many solid verses he’s provided over the past nearly thirty years of his life, whether on his own songs or on the work of others, he’s bounced to many a label home throughout his run.

For the hell of it, let’s run through them now, shall we?

With his former crew, Leaders of a New School, he started at Elektra Records, who also picked up his solo run for the span of four projects (The Coming, When Disaster Strikes, E.L.E.  (Extinction Level Event): The Final World Front, and Anarchy) and a group project for his Flipmode Squad (The Imperial). Dreams of the fabled second Flipmode effort (tentatively titled Rulership Movement, because that made sense) were dashed, the masters likely erased after Trevor defected to J Records after founder Clive Davis, former president of Arista Records, personally requested that he shift allegiances.

This lasted for two albums (Genesis and It Ain’t Safe No More…), until Dr. Dre came a-callin’, signing Busta to his Aftermath Records. This alliance (which resulted in the best album Trevor’s released in the new millennium, The Big Bang) ended prematurely when Trevor had a “creative clash” with Interscope head (and Dre BFF) Jimmy Iovine, forcing him to find a new label to call home. (I understand this may have been more of a “physical altercation”, but as I wasn’t present, we’ll stick with the “creative clash” language.)

Undeterred, Trevor landed a contract with Universal Motown, who agreed to release his eighth album, Back On My B.S. It underwent many many changes during production, many of which were triggered from Interscope (well, Iovine specifically, probably) feeling kinda petty, refusing to let their former artist take certain songs with him, forcing Trevor to start from scratch. A rather indecisive Busta Rhymes also cyclked through several title options, including Blessed, B.O.M.B., and the abrupt Back On My Bullshit before settling on the final product. Said final product was the lowest-selling album of his career, a direct result of confusing marketing, multiple promotional singles signaling creative directions that weren’t ultimately pursued because they were all removed from the final product, and the controversy courted by releasing a song called “Arab Money” in fucking 2009, as though that would fly undeterred.

Consequently, Busta’s ninth solo album, Year of the Dragon, dropped in 2012, only available as a free download on Google Play. Which can't be found in any (legal) format anymore, so it’s kind of like it was erased from existence. Trevor himself has been unable to convince any label to release a proper follow-up since.

Oh, mighty, fallen, etc. You get it.

Year of the Dragon is the last proper full-length album Busta Rhymes has managed to release to the masses. He recorded it for his then-newest label home, Cash Money/Young Money, and the fact that Birdman and Lil Wayne felt that this project wouldn’t bring in any money is quite the shock when you look into some of the utter garbage the two have released from the label (Tyga is the easiest example, but there are others). A partnership with Google Play, who was on the lookout for exclusive offers after Apple’s iTunes was eating their lunch in both popularity and downloads, was a financial no-brainer from Weezy, who likely had no idea what he had signed up for after shifting Trevor from Motown to Young Money (both divisions of Universal).

Year of the Dragon consists of fourteen tracks and zero skits, proving that Trevor had at least remembered his lessons in keeping these things concise from his brief Aftermath days. The guest list isn’t as expansive as in the past: aside from the bigger names he usually worked well with (represented on here by Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, Rick Ross, and, ugh, Robin Thicke), he filled several spots on the roster with members of his new Conglomerate camp, the Flipmode Squad being a thing of the past. Production was handled by Ty Fyffe, Mr. Porter, Bink!, Boi-1da, and a slew of beatmakers you’ve likely never heard from before or since.

Of note, Year of the Dragon is the first Busta Rhymes album in a solo career that has spanned over twenty goddamn years that features no production input from either DJ Scratch or the late J. Dilla. Which is likely a sign of the quality wherein, but fuck it, I have a project to finish, so.

1. I’M TALKING TO YOU

Right off the bat, we are privy to the best Busta Rhymes song I’ve heard from him since The Big Bang was released six years prior. This is either a sign that Year of the Dragon will buck the trend of Trevor’s overall artistic decline, or it will prove that frontloading your project with its best track should be a matter for consumer advocates to litigate. “I’m Talking To You” works off of a Ty Fyffe beat that loops a segment of the musical backing from Tears For Fears’ “Shout” as well as a lyric or two, and if you two haven’t realized by now that working New Wave into hip hop is extremely my shit, I fear you don’t know me at all. Busta delivers two verses that are among the most focused of his career, his outsized animated persona reigned in as he chooses to pursue a more lyrical path, and it was a brilliant decision on his part. “I’m Talking To You” is a banger, even with the extended song intro that may have you considering prematurely hitting that ‘skip’ button. Shout out to Ty Fyffe for turning “Shout” into a certified boom bap slapper – can’t say I saw that one coming. I cannot stress enough how good this song is, and not just because I was so thrilled that our chosen genre stopped pretending that “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” was the only thing Tears For Fears was ever known for. Oh God, the rest of Year of the Dragon is going to fucking suck, isn’t it?

2. TIL WE DIE (FEAT. TREY SONGZ & RICK ROSS)

That drop in quality came fairly quickly, didn’t it? “Til We Die” is yet another exercise in braggadocio-as-song, with Trevor spending the entirety of the track boasting about how much better he has it than his ubiquitous “haters” because all of the time he’s spent “grindin’, never sleepin’, just be ballin’ on for days” has resulted in “successfully manifestin’ a thought and living out the dream,” as though he’s using this shitty Dready instrumental to shill for The Secret. Busta Rhymes and his vision board aren’t very convincing, nor does he sound all that good on here. The only reason our host remains passable on “Til We Die” is because of the efforts of his collaborators, crooner Trey Songz and former corrections officer Rick Ross, both of whom stick to the theme (for Rozay this is no small feat, as you may know) but turn in performances that would have been hilariously awful had the song as a whole not been just goddamn dreadful. If you ever wanted to hear Trevor tackle the ever-expansive world of yacht rap, I found the song you’ve looking for, but trust me, you will never want to listen to it.

3. DO THAT THING

The bipolar nature of Year of the Dragon is whiplash-inducing. “Do That Thing” plays a horrific prank on the listener, opening with the easily-discernible sounds of Lil’ Fame and Billy Danze ad-libbing an introduction, but once you’re adequately prepared to rock, Busta Rhymes pulls a bait-and-switch, suddenly shifting us into solo song territory. (M.O.P. were never even present to begin with – their vocals were sampled from “Ante Up”.). Why Trevor and producer Focus chose to leave that misleading horseshit on “Do That Thing” is a mystery to me, as the song actually works just fine on its own: it isn’t great, mind you, but it certainly couldn’t be considered “bad”. Except for when you realize that you were tricked: then all you want in this life is to burn this motherfucking song down to ash. Focus’s instrumental resembles one of the more simplistic compositions Trevor’s friend and former label boss Dr. Dre might have conjured up on an off day, and our host sneaks into every pocket, relishing each punchline and threat as though he may have been excited about his the terms of his Cash Money contract or something. In fact, it feels so close to an Andre Young prescription that you could tell me “Do That Thing" was an outtake from Busta’s lone Aftermath album The Big Bang and I’d believe you, no questions asked. So yeah, aside from the M.O.P. fake-out, this wasn’t bad. But Busta Rhymes eroded my trust with that bullshit, so consider the rest of this write-up to be from the point of view of my side-eye.

4. MAKE IT LOOK EASY (FEAT. GUCCI MANE)

Although I can’t with good conscience recommend this song to anyone with a heartbeat, “Make It Look Easy” isn’t exactly terrible. Rather, it’s indistinguishable from the other mid tracks Busta Rhymes has in his back catalog. Producer DJ Ted Smooth generates a riff on the instrumental from The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Just Playin’ (Dreams)” (a fact referenced by a sort of-excited, sort of-guarded Gucci Mane during his guest verse), which already makes me feel like this is going to be some lazy shit, but Trevor’s bars, as you may have hoped after looking at that title, describe his lavish lifestyle and how seriously he treats his craft fairly effortlessly, and his flow even generated a chuckle out of me (in his lone animated moment of the entire song – you’ll know it when you hear it). Gucci’s hook is annoying at first, but the repetition drills itself into your mind, so even though his overall performance was kind of bland, you’ll end yup feeling like it was nice for him to have been invited in the first place. I suppose this entire paragraph could have been trimmed down to the two-word description “wholly inoffensive”, right?

5. PRESSURE (FEAT. LIL WAYNE)

The only real indication that Busta Rhymes and Lil Wayne (his labelmate and boss at the time) collaborated on “Pressure” on purpose is when Weezy’s first bar references the hook that Trevor just finished recording. This, of course, doesn’t mean these guys were ever at the studio at the same time, but it was a nice touch, especially as neither artist mentions the other’s presence at any point over this Andrew “Pop” Wansel production, which was pretty catchy overall. Trevor’s theme for Year of the Dragon appears to be “look at how awesome I am” (unsurprisingly, as he is a rap star), and “Pressure” sticks with that narrative through his boasts-n-bullshit, delivered in a calmer-than-usual, but still aggressive, posture. Wayne, for his part, does his Wayne thing, kicking off his verse talking about sex before seguing to some other shit before ending up right back at boning, his favorite topic. The two may never have spoken to one another in real life as far as I know (just because they have other collaborations out in the world means jack shit to me), but at least “Pressure” ended up decent regardless.

6. LOVE-HATE (FEAT. ROBIN THICKE)

This song is horrible and Mr. Porter should feel bad that his instrumental ended up being used for it. (I realize that he likely had no control over this, but that’s just how awful this track actually is.) But what’s worse is Busta’s overall message on “Love-Hate”: on here, he strips his romantic partner of her agency, not allowing her to have feelings that oppose anything that he himself happens to be doing in the moment, even going so far as to tell her that he “hates” it when she’s on her period because of how emotionally “stifled” he feels. Yep. Busta Rhymes is a fucking asshole on “Love-Hate”. And every woman who ever listens to this bullshit (of which there won’t be many, let’s be real) will know that Busta Rhymes is a fucking asshole because of his unfiltered, problematic performance. “I love you only when you agree with me or are doing something for me, but I hate you when you’re thinking for yourself” is a powerfully misogynistic, wrongheaded, dickish mood, and I know we’re talking about hip hop here, but this example is somehow worse than the fuckery female fans have had to put up with for decades. Yikes. Adding to the red flags is the presence of the highly-suspect crooner Robin Thicke, who sings some stupid shit. It’s “fuck this song” all goddamn day.

7. GRIND REAL SLOW

Shockingly, it takes Trevor seven songs into Year of the Dragon before he slips back into his old habit of chasing his next club banger, and “Grind Real Slow” is a motherfucking doozy. Not because it’s any good, obviously, but because of his over-the-top and brazen Busta’s appetite for the club scene has grown with each passing album. The Bink! production on here is an adequate facsimile of the kind of shit that was popular maybe two years prior to the release of Year of the Dragon, what with its liberal usage of elements better implemented by acts such as Diplo and The Cataracts on their own efforts, and our host’s ode to the apparently cartoonishly-large ass of his romantic partner is never subtle, but nor is it ever entertaining. The flat vocals from Jayms Madison during the chorus approach the robotic sound Daft Punk has perfected, but “Grind Real Slow” is no “Touch It”, and not even Busta’s calm, relaxed bars can change that for me. TL:DR – this song sucks.

8. KING TUT (FEAT. REEK DA VILLAIN & J-DOE)

The Flipmode Squad having long ago become but a dot in his rearview mirror (their recent “reunion” (read: promotional tactic that didn’t quite work) for a new single from our host notwithstanding), Busta Rhymes, always in need of a group of yes-men surrounding him at all times (because someone has to drive, after all), invites two members of his Conglomerate community to play on Year of the Dragon: J-Doe and Reek da Villain (technically now a former member of that crew, but nobody gives a shit). The Jahlil Beats-produced “King Tut” positions a corny-ass hook (one that, sadly, does not sample Steve Martin, but thanks for going there with me) over an instrumental which is too lifeless to withstand the weight of three separate artists, leaving in its wake what is very nearly a waste of everyone’s time, given J-Doe’s bland contribution and Trevor’s own boasts-n-bullshit sounding less than convincing. The only person escaping from this crumbling pyramid unscathed is Reek, and that motherfucker isn’t even in the group anymore, so.

9. SOUND BOY (FEAT. CAM’RON)

Production on “Sound Boy” is credited to Boi-1da (along with Matthew Burnett), but rest assured that the music on here does not play like a beat Drake may have rejected. I’m not altogether sure that Busta would even know what to do with one of those moody, atmospheric, weak-drumbeat compositions in the first fucking place. But that doesn’t mean “Sound Boy” gets a pass from me, because this shit blows. Trevor’s performance relies too heavily on flashy animation and mixing board wizardry, completely eliminating “good writing” from the equation, and as such, his shit-talking is fucking exhausting., Guest star Cam’ron, and no I don’t know why either, makes it a point to mention fellow artists Fat Joe and Kanye West, but never our actual host, only reinforcing my belief that these guys never shared studio space, and the lack of chemistry between them is palpable on the completed track. Ugh.

10. DOIN IT AGAIN (FEAT. REEK DA VILLAIN & CHANEL NICOLE)

Musically, “Doin It Again: is the fucking laziest song on Year of the Dragon, as “producer” DJ Ted Smooth merely swipes a section of Hi-Tek’s “Round & Round” and simply loops it up, only throwing in occasional extra drum kicks but nothing else on the entirety of the run time. (Every two bars also ends with the sound of singer Jonell’s voice from the original track, which is annoying and frustrating – I mean, seriously, you couldn’t fix that shit in post, fucker?) Chanel Nicole, who also apparently appeared on the Wu-Tang Clan’s “Preacher’s Daughter” (off of A Better Tomorrow, which I cannot confirm since I haven’t listened to it at all, in any fashion, since my write-up, which shouldn’t surprise you two), performs the hook in a bland, inoffensive manner while Busta and Reek try (not very hard) to sell the listener on their awesomeness, failing miserably. Trevor, especially, fumbles the ball on “Doin It Again”: although he manages what’ll probably become the best line of the evening (“Open a door for me while I go into another tax bracket” is kind of funny), his delivery omits the energy and confidence his best work exudes effortlessly. In short, he sounds bored, which makes him sound boring. Trevor obviously doesn’t have it in him anymore to go full-on Animaniacs (see: “Woo-Hah” Got You All In Check”), but his apathy here is so palpable, it could be divided up and sold, which is a problem. Busta Rhymes turns in a performance on which his shit-talking is as lethargic as Smooth’s looping of the sample for the “instrumental”. Fuck this song right in its goddamn fucking ear. (Have I ever written that about two different songs on the same project? Bonus!) Also, really fucking weird to hear our host shouting out Young Money as his own crew, so.

11. WINE & GO DOWN (FEAT. VYBZ KARTEL)

I was going to dismiss “Wine & Go Down” (what a title, right kids? Definitely as catchy as “Netflix & chill”, yeah? What, was our host afraid of catching a cease-and-desist?) with a “meh”, but that would imply that I was indifferent to this song, enough to not give a shit about it, when the truth is that I just thought this horny dancehall attempt was bad. Busta Rhymes, convicted murderer Vybz Kartel, and an uncredited female vocalist all try to out-perv each other, leaving the audience thoroughly unsatisfied. Dready’s instrumental sounds like he ripped the audio from a YouTube video entitled “Shitty Vybz Kartel-type beat”, and both participants (but not the anonymous woman, who is entirely forgettable – hey, maybe they forgot she was even there in the first place, so obviously they would leave her name out of the liner notes) trade off depressingly climax-adverse bars, Kartel likely sneak-dissing his rival Mavado while praising Lady Gaga for being “bad”, and Trevor switching from his rapper persona to something his Jamaican background might one day consider referring to as “dancehall”. And I’m one million percent certain that the title, which is really fucking stupid, is merely the byproduct of a misinterpretation of the hook’s lyrics by a low-level employee at the studio. Gah.

12. MOVIE (FEAT. J-DOE)

No such reservations about here, though: meh.

13. CRAZY

While listening to “Movie”, yet another entry in the Wikipedia page for the “my life is exciting and dramatic, not unlike a motion picture you would pay to view in a darkened theater” trope, I couldn’t help but wonder how it would have sounded had J-Doe been replaced with, say, 2 Chainz. The song still would have fucking sucked, but the once and future Tity Boi would have injected a bit of energy into the suckiness. “Movie” had no hope, though. “Crazy” did, in that the Dready instrumental actually sounds like a natural extension of the deep album cuts from Busta’s pre-Y2K “there’s only five years left!” output. But then our host opens his mouth.

Trevor’s verses are delivered in a thoroughly joyless fashion, which is slow enough for listeners to catch every syllable, but apathetic in that way where it’ll be difficult to convince anyone to give a flying fuck about what’s happening here. “Crazy” is supposed to describe how, um, crazy the man’s life can get (and how dominant his position within our chosen genre is), but as he isn’t even all that excited about the prospect, how in the hell can he expect the listener to root for him? I can’t help but imagine his mid-1990s cameo king Busta Rhymes could have destroyed this beat. Hey, maybe even the Trevor that recorded The Big Bang could have had a run. But this motherfucker I’m writing about today? Nah.

14. BLEED THE SAME BLOOD (FEAT. MAINO & ANTHONY HAMILTON)

The album finale is the K. Figz-produced “Bleed the Same Blood”, whose sound, Anthony Hamilton cameo, and even its own title promises a serious, sort-of reflective look at how he shares more similarities with his adversaries than he would typically like to admit, but in reality is yet another exercise in boasts-n-bullshit that rungs hollow for a dude that possesses as much lyrical skill as Busta Rhymes. However, it does feature something that the rest of Year of the Dragon lacks: enthusiasm from the guest star, Maino, who not only details his own position within the music industry with aggressive minimalism, he also mentions Busta Rhymes by name, so at least this dude was on the same goddamn continent as our host at least the one time. Trevor claims to be “passionate about getting this money,” but you wouldn’t be able to tell. His outro on the song, which also completes the album proper, ends with the line, “You can never stop what is destined, I hope you’re happy for me,” which is a great sentiment, but to get there you have to sit through not just the nonsensical bar, “I’m like a bitch’s blouse on a clothesline,” which, huh?, but through thirteen other tracks of wildly varying degrees of quality that do as much to tarnish the career of our host as they do to push it along, limping toward the finish line. Dear Lord.

THE LAST WORD: Busta Rhymes has always had a problem with his solo albums, which isn’t a sentence one should be writing within the body of a review for his ninth such project, but clearly nobody in the industry took notice at the time, so I’ll spell it out for you two: Trevor Smith isn’t a very good solo artist. He seems to be unable to maintain a single song idea or concept for the length of said song. Quick cameo? Not only is he your man, he'll likely steal the show. But a full track? Please, I beg of you, look elsewhere. Lyrically, he sounds alright behind the mic, but as he’s reached higher plateaus of success his hunger for the sport has declined increasingly. His ear for beats can only be rivaled by the likes of Nas or Ras Kass, in that he seems to have absolutely no fucking clue what he sounds best over, which is a weird complaint, because the finest Busta Rhymes songs feature a perfect marriage of artist and instrumental, but those have been fewer and farther between as of late. Aside from his running Y2K paranoia early on, there aren’t any themes running through any of the man’s solo projects that one could hang a proper album onto: everything from Busta Rhymes sounds like a compilation of tracks he found on his hard drive. Year of the Dragon is no better: after exactly one fucking song that is easily my favorite Busta Rhymes song of the decade (that would be “I’m Talking To You”, and to be honest the beat does carry a lot of the track there), Year of the Dragon dives into a downward spiral that is embarrassing, pathetic, and sad all at once.

Abandoning Year of the Dragon at the Google firehouse is the smartest thing anyone involved with this project thought to do, since the Busta Rhymes featured here is an uninspired wreck, still chasing the next club hit even though the man himself stopped going out on Saturday nights six years prior. His loose Conglomerate collective must be too afraid that Trevor will ‘roid rage out and drive a car drunkenly into them or something, since nearly every terrible idea on this album (beat selection, subject matter, choice of collaborators – where are Q-Tip, or Rampage, or Swizz Beatz, or literally anyone that hip hop heads would actually want to hear the man rap against? Why Robin Thicke? Why?!?!) could have easily been avoided had any of those yes-men had the balls to stand up to their boss. Trevor Smith’s overall career arc is in need of an intervention, lest the former Cameo King of the 1990’s find himself erased from the hip hop history books.

Just kidding, that’ll never happen, if only on the strength of his “Scenario” guest verse alone. But Year of the Dragon is trash, son. There is no need for anyone to conduct any Google “research” to seek this one out, even if New Wave-loving Max loves one specific song. My feelings won’t be hurt if you never hear “I’m Talking To You” – I’d rather know that you two used your valuable time much more wisely.

-Max

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The Busta Rhymes catalog is now complete. Click here to catch up on his (solo) work.