Picture it, the year was 1996. I had zero idea who the dread headed cat in the red, black, and green jacket on Rap City was in the car rocking like he was at a heavy metal concert yelling that he made sure Everything Remains Raw. The beat was infectious, captivating, and held my attention because the energy was just over the top. Then right after the first sixteen bars that dread headed fellow points a finger into a new scene in the video, rocking an all-white suit, yelling ya-ya-ya-ya-ya, which is the infamous beginning to Whoo-Hah, Got You All In Check. The fact that Onyx and Q-Tip was in there wilding out on the video was a plus.
For me, and most of Chicago, that was our first official introduction into the golden era of that man known as Busta Rhymes. Now it is important to note I had no idea at this point who the hell Leaders Of The New School were, nor did I know that Busta Rhymes was a former member. All I knew was that this crazy cat was out there with a fireball of energy blazing in the hip-hop sky.
The sixteen year old in me was fascinated with the heightened level of creativity Busta Rhymes exhibited. Understand, nobody in hip-hop or rap for that matter was out there having fun with it at that time. Gangster rap had come in by 1996 and dudes were mad dogging, gang banging, and definitely not having fun in videos. Busta Rhymes was all of that and a bag of chips on the side with it. In an era of every rapper and their mama starting a clothing company Busta Rhymes was probably the first to have custom clothes designed that matched his music video sets, which later was revealed he designed himself. Dude was fresh and clean way before Outkast made it fashionable.
When the Whoo-Hah, Got You All In Check remix came out with Ol Dirty Bastard and them two fools were tied up in strait-jackets I was an instant fan of the Busta Rhymes. It was an explosion of sound, a catchy hook, and a dance that had everybody losing their minds just naturally being silly. That was the fun of Busta Rhymes – he could chop you off at the knees on a verse but he knew how to have a good time and not take himself so seriously. He also wasn’t gimmicky as he became in later albums – this was really like the end of the fun time of hip-hop where it was about having a good time, rocking the mic, rocking the crowd, and leaving a lasting impression on the masses on your technique.
Party and kick it vibes continued via the second single It’s A Party facilitates that, with Busta Rhymes and his Mickey Mouse ear dreadlock buns escorting Zhane (who is singing the hook) into a private party with the Flipmode Squad (who in those days was Rampage The Last Boy Scout, Black, and Spliffstar) where they doing a little dance while planning on making a little love to get down later that night. I think its this joint that made me team Busta Rhymes and team Flipmode Squad, because even almost thirty years later I still rock this cut in the car on hardcore regular rotation. All of that essence Busta Rhymes emitted made me seek out The Coming.
Don’t get it twisted and let the commercial appeal of the lead singles fool you into thinking this is a party album, because it ain’t. This beast is a gritty hip-hop album.
Busta Rhymes on this album is a narrator of the hip-hop apocalypse (sans the commercial songs), crafting an intricate tale of the end of a golden era in between screaming there’s only five years left until the year 2000, where things will change and for the worse. In retrospect it was as prophetic as De La Soul’s Stakes Is High, for hip-hop was never the same after those five years of the 1990s were left. He is unapologetic at pointing out rappers of that era were at career end death, erased in a wash of the new gangster rap in a market that didn’t care how eloquent they were on the mic and thirsty for beef and nothing but beef, which had gotten off the records and into gunplay. In the sea of all that chaos there Busta Rhymes was, at a crossroads, unable to go back to the comforts of the LONS family tree and uncertain where he would be in the grand scheme of hip-hop five years later. No matter, he was there, on the scene, giving you all he had, in a mashup of hip-hop that married the best groups of his tenure together in a holy trinity only he could pull off in 1996.
While Everything Remains Raw is a nice PG rated preview of the visceral gritty boom bap hip-hop on this album, you can’t begin to be prepared at how nice nasty of a hip-hop album The Coming truly is. Busta Rhymes was real sneaky putting a splash of commercial appeal on an album that without those songs would be more on the level of a hip-hop mixtape, featuring some of the nastiest grittiest hip-hop cats at the time – Flipmode Squad Meets Def Squad is a nasty cut where everybody is going for broke trying to have the standout verse you remember. There is a bit of a Leaders Of The New School reunion with Keep It Movin’, with Charlie Brown rounding up the rear per his usual in a memorable verse that feels almost bittersweet that The Coming isn’t a LONS album. And of course, all the members of Flipmode Squad have their sixteen bars to clown on with such cuts like Abandon Ship. Couple that with the production of Q-Tip, J-Dilla, Easy Mo Bee, and DJ Scratch and you have that hip-hop album that still stands up on both legs thirty years later.
The Coming is one of those once in a lifetime albums not even Busta Rhymes can get again.
