Album Review: Busta Rhymes' latest

Busta Rhymes has always been a populist at heart.

Blessed with the boundless energy of a Benzedrine addict and the verbal gymnastics of the speed-talking Micro-Machines Man, the Brooklyn-born veteran has amassed a consistently party-friendly discography.

While his NYC peers often struggled to earn radio play and mass appeal, all Busta needed was a Hype Williams fish-eye lens and a hot beat to achieve MTV Jams ubiquity and film offers. Even Martha Stewart couldn’t help but be charmed by the dreadlocked and dress-clad Rhymes during their iconic appearance at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards.

Yet with crack-rap au courant, 2006’s “The Big Bang” found Rhymes shearing his natty dreads and inking a deal with hard-core impresarios Aftermath/Interscope. Gone was the ebullient and effortless radio touch, replaced by a scowl and screwy coke boasts on songs such as "Cocaina.”

His latest, “Back on My B.S.,” has been described by Rhymes himself as a comeback album of sorts -- with the legal and label problems that previously plagued him replaced by the sanguine attitude that once catapulted him to platinum status. Accordingly, anticipation for the record ran high in the blog world, thanks to the 2008 single “Don’t Touch Me (Throw ‘Da Water on ‘Em),” which recalled his early crowd-please “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See."

A reinvigorated Busta Rhymes skirts controversy, talks new album

On 2006’s "The Big Bang," many longtime Busta Rhymes fans found themselves baffled by the veteran rapper’s new direction.

Under the aegis of Interscope/Aftermath and Dr. Dre, the rapper born Trevor Smith had buzzed his trademark dreadlocks and wore a menacing glower, a marked contrast from the gleeful anarchy that prevailed during his first decade as a solo artist. While the album scored a platinum plaque and his first-ever No. 1 debut on the U.S. pop chart, it featured a heavier, embittered-sounding Rhymes, prone to cocaine and crime boasts and morose paranoia.

What most didn’t know was that the music’s somber tone stemmed from extenuating circumstances. Over a two-year stretch, the Flipmode leader witnessed the murder of close friend and bodyguard Israel Ramirez; saw himself arraigned on charges of third-degree assault; faced weapons charges when police found a machete in his car; and was accused of attacking an ex-driver. To finish the unfortunate farrago, it was reported that a squabble over creative differences with Chairman Jimmy Iovine caused him to leave Interscope.