Country: U.S.A.
Hip-hop legend
Busta Rhymes
spent the better part of a decade without a new studio album, issuing
only mixtapes and singles after 2012's Year of the Dragon. With over 30
years in the game and countless iconic hits, he could have slipped
quietly into retirement, but instead comes back louder than ever on his
tenth studio album,
Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God. The 22-track set finds
Busta
delivering his time-tested bombastic flows over old-school East Coast
production and wrangling in a dizzying number of big-name guests to help
out. These guest features result in some of the album's best moments,
like when longtime peer
Q-Tip hops on the smooth, even-tempered "Don't Go" or when
Kendrick Lamar kicks off the sentimental,
Jackson 5-sampling
"Look Over Your Shoulder" with a head-spinningly complex, scattershot
verse. Even on tracks where the instrumentals are relatively relaxed,
like the slow-burning R&B-based "You Will Never Find Another Me,"
Busta stays in beast mode, throwing out high-energy bars between passionate choruses sung by
Mary J. Blige.
E.L.E. 2
is tied together loosely by themes of apocalypse and humankind atoning
for their wrongdoings at the end of the world. This gives
Busta's
already aggressive approach an especially ominous atmosphere,
particularly when he's shouting lyrics about the end of days and secret
societies operating in the shadows on "Satanic" or giving a sermon over
the course of a seven-minute intro. A lengthy spoken monologue from
Louis Farrakhan
recorded exclusively for the album amplifies the intensity already
established by songs centered around political rhetoric and dark
visions. This intensity is broken up by some lighter moments, however,
with
Anderson .Paak stopping by on the sleek, electro-tinged "Yuuuu" and
Busta flipping the beat of
Bell Biv DeVoe's '90s classic "Poison" for the rowdy party starter "Outta My Mind."
Even with some respite from the gloom and doom that defines much of the album, E.L.E. 2 overstays its welcome and makes some questionable choices. "Slow Flow" awkwardly reuses rhymes from long-deceased rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard without context, and a duet with Mariah Carey
("Where I Belong") sounds unshakably stuck in 2002 radio production.
It's to be expected that an emcee who helped innovate mainstream rap in
the late '90s and early aughts might have some dated perspectives on his
2020 album, and at times these throwback sounds can even be charming in
a nostalgic way. It's not a lack of innovation that drags E.L.E. 2
down as much as a lack of editing. Four or five less tracks and a
little less time spent extrapolating on the end of the world would have
made for a far more engaging listen, even taking into consideration how
rare new material from Busta Rhymes can be in this phase of his work. By the time we reach the final outro, one of many interludes consisting of Chris Rock serving as a relentless hype man, the total album experience has been exhausting.
