My Gut Reaction: Busta Rhymes - Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God (Reloaded) (November 2, 2020)

It took Trevor “Busta Rhymes” Smith eight years and multiple false starts to finally get Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God into the hands of the listener. Not wanting to waste another moment ever again in his lifetime, it only took the man three fucking days to drop Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God (Reloaded), a re-release of project with four additional tracks tacked onto the end (leaving the main program unaltered, at least as far as I know – what, were you expecting me to sit through all twenty-two original tracks again so soon?).

I would believe that is some sort of world record, except I’m convinced that the man is going to keep re-releasing this project until he’s finally depleted all of the songs from his hard drive. He may never get another shot at a solo album, so why not milk the current one for the rest of our days, right? I mean, there’s only five years left and all.

Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God (Reloaded) contains four additional tracks that are unrelated to the main narrative. Unlike the original project, at first glance it seems like these songs were recorded with a younger audience in mind, as the production credits likely won’t appeal to anybody who was around when Leaders of the New School was still a thing. Only one guest is featured, and it’s a big one, one whose identity you’ve likely already seen elsewhere but which I won’t reveal yet, so as to maintain an aura of mystery. (It’s Eminem. I’m talking about Eminem.)

Fuck the bullshit, let’s finish the review for an album I thought I had already completed once.

(For obvious reasons, I’m going to only focus on the new stuff – you can read the original review here if you’d like the full story.)

23. BLOWING THE SPEAKERS
One of the reasons Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God was as successful as it was (it’s weird to talk about that project in the past tense, right? I mean, it dropped only three days before this Reloaded take) was how Busta Rhymes managed to create a product of pure nostalgia, its better tracks hearkening back to the sound he had cultivated earlier in his career, specifically when he was still worried about how Y2K was going to kill us all. “Blowing The Speakers”, er, blows all that shit up, and the listener is left behind to suffocate in the rubble, as this was terrible. Everything about this one screams, “See, I know about today’s artists, too!”, as producer Murda Beatz gives Trevor what is essentially a Migos song as filtered through Busta Rhymes, and if that description didn’t cause you to cringe in your seat, our host finishes the job through the use of two different flows: a lethargic, low-energy snoozefest, and an outright Migos riff that might just break your spirit. Busta’s animated flow is malleable enough to sound good over any type of musical backing, and that includes trap beats such as this, but you see, the thing is, Busta’s animated flow took the day off from “Blowing The Speakers”, rendering this collection of boasts-n-bullshit sounding awfully generic and clichéd. Oh, I’m sorry, you wanted Busta Rhymes to sound like Travis Scott or Young Thug? Get the fuck off the blog – this is where adults gather to discuss things. Anyway, this was trash.

24. WHO ARE YOU
Can someone please explain to me how “Who Are You” was somehow good enough to make the (expanded) album, but a song like 2008’s “Don’t Touch Me (Throw Da Water On ‘Em)” was left to die a lonely death as a promotional single only? Because this is fucking garbage. Trevor seems hell-bent on courting a younger fanbase with the Jahlil Beats-produced “Who Are You”, an activity which will backfire on him, as not only is there nothing here worth listening to, it also doesn’t feature any of the quirks that people listen to Busta Rhymes for in the first place, unless you count the constant adjustments to his delivery as a character trait, which I don’t when it sounds this bad. Jahlil Beats deserves a moderate amount of credit (but let’s not get too crazy) for crafting an instrumental that isn’t just a repetitive loop like “Blowing The Speakers” was, but while I certainly understand the temptation to collect a check from a huge name such as Busta, this beat should have been held for the Bobby Shmurdas and Young M.A.s of the world. Trevor just isn’t the guy for this instrumental. I’d kind-of get it if he had featured a guest rapper from the newer generation, even if it was just a ruse to show off for the kids, but nope, our host keeps this one all to himself, and it. Is. Awful. It isn’t too late to delete this one from the servers, Bus. And the hook is really stupid and confusing – is Busta threatening to murder (I’m sorry, “flatline”) a man or a woman? Because the words you choose matter.

25. HOPE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE
That title is a bit of a misdirect, as there is no positive message on “Hope Your Dreams Come True”, unless one counts Busta actually saying that phrase during the chorus, although, to be clear, he says it before launching into a hilariously ill-advised bit where he repeats the phrase, “Fucka you” (not a typo) just for the hell of it. The glitch trap background, courtesy of our host and Viewers Like You, is god fucking awful, as are Trevor’s boasts-n-bullshit, although, to be fair, at least his bars on here are a few degrees better than on the previous couple of tracks, and the couplet, “Most of you n----s got a drip that’s fucked up / You should kill your stylist and hire a tailor” is kind of amusing. Kind of. Otherwise, no, Busta Rhymes is zero for three here. Even for a project where none of the tracks really mesh that well together at all, these three additional songs have no place appearing on Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God, as they just do not fit, and they also serve to recontextualize the entire listening experience, and not in a positive way, especially if you declined to listen to the album straight through but decided that this feature-length Reloaded take was worthy of your valuable time, I guess? (Seriously, who the fuck would be reading this review that isn’t just listening to these four tracks by themselves?) These songs were trimmed for a reason, Trevor – why couldn’t you just let them die in peace?

26. CALM DOWN (FEAT. EMINEM)
The final “new” track of the evening isn’t even remotely new – it’s a six-year-old song that previously appeared on Calm Down: The Clash EP in 2014, which was really more of a maxi-single than an EP, since it featured four different versions of “Calm Down” (two different vocal takes featuring different guests, one solo cut, and its instrumental, which remained the same all through the picture), a track that was teased as a single for whatever the fuck Busta Rhymes had been promising his fanbase way back when (I’ve lost track). I’m also written about this one already, but if you aren’t a Patreon subscriber you may have missed out on my thoughts about the lone project Busta Rhymes was able to release to retail in between Year of the Dragon and Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God, so I’ll play ball here, at least for a little while.

Producer Scoop DeVille’s Bob & Earl “Harlem Shuffle”-sampling “Calm Down”, stylized to obviously pay homage to House of Pain’s classic “Jump Around”, but not so blatantly as to have to actually pay producer DJ Muggs (I’m just assuming here, I don’t know if he benefits), fits onto Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God just as well as absolutely anything else would, which is to say, it does not. Built around the loose framework of an in-studio “battle” (albeit one recorded in two different states via e-mail), “Calm Down” purports to be a competition of sorts between Busta Rhymes and Marshall Mathers, one where neither artist ever directly attacks the other, so think of this as a precursor to a really boring episode of Verzuz. As expected, both artists spike their extra-extra-lengthy performances with goofy bars (Busta: “What in the fat fishes of a phenomenal Fahrvergnügen fuck is going on?”), gleeful shit-talking, and standard-issue claims of hip hop dominance, which hit a little differently when at least one of the participants here is actually still as popular today as they were when “Calm Down” was first released. (It’s Eminem. I’m talking about Eminem.) Slim Shady works his multi-syllabic flow (and rampant homophobia, which was out of fashion in 2014 and sticks out like a sore homophobe today) around Scoop’s instrumental, which is catchy enough, if a but frustratingly repetitive for the nearly six minutes of your life it takes for this nightmare to end, and he sounds exactly as you’d expect: technically more than proficient, but not entertainingly so. Trevor seems excited to be here, though, so points should be awarded for that, even though, as I’ve written before, this song is motherfucking exhausting to sit through, and who wants to listen to a song that makes you feel winded. Discounting the obvious star power Marshall’s name still carries, however, was there a reason why this had to be tacked onto a project that was already seventy-eight minutes long before Busta decided to unleash his director’s cut upon an unsuspecting public?

THE LAST WORD: I’ll keep this brief: Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God (Reloaded) comes dangerously close to tipping the scale, causing an entertaining, but already overlong, album to slip down toward a situation where there are many more bad songs than good, and Busta Rhymes literally cannot afford for the critical consensus to shift so drastically against him right now. Three of these four songs should never have seen a proper release: maybe it’s possible that I’d look differently at “Blowing The Speakers” if it had simply leaked to the Interweb (not unlike the original Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God, I guess), but Trevor’s trying to make money off of these songs, and if this is what he believed would score him some of those sweet sweet streams, then I’m concerned about how fucking terrible his future output will sound. As for that fourth song, “Calm Down” isn’t what I would have chosen to tack on if given a list of all of Trevor’s singles that never found a proper album home. (I’ve seen some online love for his Q-Tip collaboration “Thank You”, which I can get behind, but I probably would have gone with his team-up with Ol’ Dirty Bastard, “Where’s Your Money?”, which may have fit the project a bit better.)

So no, you shouldn’t listen to Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God (Reloaded), especially if you actually liked the original project and would like it to remain untainted in your mind (and ears). Just go run that back instead, and ignore this shit even exists.

-Max

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Catch up on the Busta Rhymes saga here.