Busta Rhymes discussed the fundamentals of his new album “Dillagence II” last night at Los Angeles’ Grammy Museum, breaking down a handful of key tracks during a Q&A with musician Anderson .Paak and performing a string of his greatest hits along with a guest appearance from Common. On “Dillagence II,” which was released in August, Rhymes raps over a spate of beats from the late James “J Dilla” Yancey, who died in 2006. At the Grammy Museum, he began by admitting that the weight of the moment had caught up with him and sharing appreciation for all the folks in attendance including Dilla’s mother Ma Dukes, music executive Sylvia Rhone, manager Mona Scott-Young and musician Jimmy Jam.
Shed a little tear backstage,” he said. Dilla always gave these beat CDs that had 25 beats on them,” said Rhymes, discussing how the tapes would always feature beats that would fade in and out, making it difficult for him to loop them into full tracks. He recalled visiting Dilla at his mother’s home in Detroit amid his health struggles and how she basically became his engineer as he dealt with physical complications.
And then Ma Dukes is also Busta Rhymes‘ Ma in their home,” he said. She goes and finds the record he wants to sample from the alphabetically ordered record collection in the coat closet. And then he would make my beat CDs based on the beats that he would make that day and send me home with it.
And I would live with these records over the years. Sometimes the beats were so incredible, I would actually be scared to rhyme on them because I didn’t want to mess up the way the beat was as far as how dope I thought it was.” Rhymes then discussed the particulars of several tracks on “Dillagence II” including “This Woman” featuring D’Angelo, recalling how he received the late singer’s vocals in February and laid down his rhymes that day. .Paak also asked him about “What We Got in Common” with Common and Batiste and their own collaboration “Kingpin (Knock Ya Head Off),” which also features Ludacris. Near the end of their conversation, .Paak asked Rhymes what it would mean for “Dillagence II” to get recognition from the Recording Academy, considering he has been nominated 12 times but hasn’t won.
I actually created an album that was a moment that was captured in time. Like, I don’t think y’all understand. I’m a hoarder of production, right?
I have these long relationships with many incredible producers and artists that’s still popping now, right?” He named a few producers who had given him scores of beats — the Neptunes, Swizz Beatz, Timbaland — and said that he wouldn’t give them back if asked because they’re “moments in time that you can’t even recreate.” “The most incredible part about these moments is a lot of the shit that they was doing was timeless,” he said. Every production from him is older than 20 years old. But it now has Cascade dishwasher liquid sparkle all around it.
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