Words by Jesse Serwer, Photo via UpNorthTrips—
Here’s something you didn’t know about Busta Rhymes: back when he was a schoolkid, he used to impress his friends by telling them that he was the Trevor Sparks whose name they’d seen on Brooklyn dancehall flyers. While that of course wasn’t true (the real Trevor Sparks, of King Jammy’s fame, died of a stroke in 2004), the artist born Trevor Smith wanted to be a deejay before he set his sights on being a rapper, and, appropriately, he’s always shown love to dancehall.
The originator of a manic, gruff rhyme style that owed as much to late ’80s/early ’90s toasters like Shabba Ranks as to his hip-hop forebears, the Jamaican-American MC has also been hip-hop’s biggest patron of JA talent, supplying key co-signs and clutch crossover remixes to everyone from Sean Paul to Popcaan. With his long-awaited Vybz Kartel collaboration “Wine and Go Down” fresh out of the oven, here’s a look at ten more notable bashment tunes from the one called Bussa Buss.