Takin’ What’s Mine: Busta Rhymes’ Revisionist History

I’ve been thinking a lot about Busta Rhymes’ recent thuggish makeover since I first listened to his Dillagence mixtape a few months ago. The tape itself is great, of course; Busta’s nimble and adaptable flow makes him sound like he was born to spit over J Dilla’s beats. Lyrically one song stood out in particular, a track titled “Takin What’s Mine”. The song stood out to me not because it was especially impressive lyrically, but because of its subject matter.

“Takin’ What’s Mine” (off Dillagence)

On “Takin’ What’s Mine”, Busta Bus takes the listener through his apparent past of hustling. Recalling when he was younger, Busta brags about taking the lunches of his classmates and stealing their lunch money. He recalls the joy of taking things from others.

When I was young, see/I was packing a punch/little feisty nigga quick to be taking your lunch

As he got older, he began “flippin’ bricks”:

The Reagonomics era was right and actual/the coke was so good the fiends were sniffing the capsules

In the outro of the song, Busta talks about the magic of the hustle and how rap music began to bring in the papers:

You know what’s beautiful? When you ain’t gotta sell no more of that shit, you can put the crack down and shit…

The Reagonomics era lasted the term of Reagan’s presidency, from 1981-1989. Busta, born Trevor Tahiem Smith, Jr. in 1976, was 9 when this era started. He moved to the suburban hamlet of Uniondale when he was 12, which would be in 1984.

When exactly was Busta moving cocaine and taking peoples’ lunches? He certainly never brought it up on the first Leaders of the New School album. Busta was rapping about girl troubles and bullies, issues affecting a teenager in the quiet, well-to-do suburb of Uniondale, New York.

When he first came onto the scene with the Leaders of the New School, Busta was attending Uniondale High School. L.O.N.S.’ debut, A Future Without A Past, was made by 4 teenagers going to high school in the suburbs. It’s structured loosely as a concept album, with members Dinco D, Charlie Brown & Busta Rhymes rapping about their high school days.

On “Just Another Case Of The PTA”, Dinco, Brown and Busta describe a typical day at school. Take a look at Busta’s verse:

ROAARRR Busta Rhymes the mighty infamous
always misbehaving and mischievous
causing aggravation I’ll never pause
pushing out spit balls through plastic straws
(IN CLASS!)
in gym I got caught at last
for lighting up the courtyard grass
(HEY!)
teacher, teacher, go to the flesh
(Busta Rhymes liked to kill the complex)
hey yo
in class, kicked it to this girl Cheryl
(WORD?)
the teacher try to tell me I was Pharaoh
(NO NO NO)
I’m not with detention, no no with suspension
a child’s wickeddy wild with the Calbridge Hill styles
teach us just a knowledge to go talk to my mommy
now when she gets home, she’s gonna wear out the body
I hate this relationship, the mom and teacher
when she reaches home hey yo she knows that I reached ya
OK, of today I am the new school, pray
between my momma, teacher, and my dad hey yo

Busta was 17 when he recorded this song, and his verse is about causing trouble in class and shooting spitballs. This is what he got up to during the average school day.

“Show Me A Hero” (off A Future Without A Past)

On “Show Me A Hero”, Busta goes solo to talk about school bullies. He begins the song hanging with the rest of the Leaders in the hall when a bully approaches. The bully begins to provoke him, and Busta is angered and tempted to fight, but states that:

Instead turned my head and walked away with no delay/I’d rather live to see another day

Busta is approached by the bully again and when said bully threatens him, Busta hits him in self-defence. This is where the line is drawn between the Busta of 1991 and the Busta of 2008. On “Takin’ What’s Mine”, Busta Rhymes raps about how hitting his fellow students and taking their lunch money made “this motherfucker feel so good.”

For a little more insight into the mind of the leader of the Leaders, I want to share a selection of a 1993 Rap Pages interview with the group.

First, Charlie Brown explains the aim of the group’s sophomore release, T.I.M.E.:

We wanted to do something different with this effort, because so many people are talking about guns, about violence, about negative things. We’re not here to tell people to kill each other or any shit like that. We’re here to uplift people. The word that best personifies our music is intelligence.

The interviewer counters with the following:

But isn’t some gangsta rap intelligent? Doesn’t rap, as a street art form, lose its base the more it detaches itself from its surroundings, especially since a great deal of the music is supposed to reflect urban reality?

Busta Rhymes responds (bolding mine):

You can’t lose that ghetto shit. Because that’s when you’re other than yourself. We’re not talking in terms of forgetting about the ghetto, just going beyond it and not dwelling on the stress. What are you gonna dwell on the stress for? Our music is alternative hip hop in that we create an alternative to the bullshit. Not just the stress that dwells in the ghetto, but in hip hop as well. Regardless of what kind of hip hop you wanna make, rap is ghetto music straight up and down. We ain’t tryin’ to say that we ain’t gonna talk about how much muthaphukkkas die, ‘cause the ghetto ain’t just about how much muthaphukkkas die.

Essentially, Busta was saying that the ghetto is always going to be in hip hop, because that’s where it comes from. Even in music made by upper middle class rappers from the suburbs, as in the case of L.O.N.S., the issues raised by the ghetto are still going to be present in the music. But Mr. Trevor Smith was saying that making music specifically about urban reality and the stress in the ghetto isn’t necessary. These issues will always be inherent in the music of hip hop, so why not rap about something else?

But as he got older, like any rapper, his commercial appeal began to wane and he looked toward popular trends. Over the years, Busta began to dumb down his lyrics and lose the manic originality his delivery possessed when he first stole the show on A Tribe Called Quest’s “Scenario”. He realized that his quiet upbringing in a small suburb wasn’t quite compelling or “real” enough. So he left that part of his past behind, and selectively revised his past to fit his new role as gangster rapper. Now Trevor Smith was raised in the ghetto instead of the suburbs. That’s revisionist history for you.

(with special thanks to Oh Word for their exhaustive L.O.N.S. retrospective)