At the risk of resounding repetition, Busta Rhymes' sixth album is a treacherous, crashing disaster. The Big Bang is most offensive not because it presupposes King of New York is an actual title worth pursuing (what kind of self-respecting monarch would want to lord over Papoose and J.R. Writer?). Not because it lacks any thematic lucidity, bouncing from exhausting club tracks to overwrought narratives. Not even because Busta's image overhaul from manic puppeteer to grim-faced street soliloquist is preposterous beyond description. The reason this album is wrongheaded and selfish lies in the simple usage of resources.
Getting Dr. Dre to buckle down and get to work these days is like pulling a sword from a stone. It takes preordained royalty (cough cough) to do it, and sometimes even then, as in the case of Rakim, it's not enough. So Dre's attention paid to this album, along with the participation of producers Denaun Porter, Timbaland and (I can't believe I'm saying this) will.i.am, are a waste of the highest order. Each one brings varying degrees of excellence to Busta and he repays them with the turgid, unmemorable and insipid. By now the clanging daft chumpery of "Touch It" has infiltrated the masses and the less said about it the better. Likewise for the blindfold checklist "New York Shit," a song so desperately transparent in false unity it sounds more like territorial denouement than celebration.
But the tracks that could have been, like Porter's frantic mid-tempo burner "They're Out ToGet Out Me," leave the worst taste. Built around Porter's aching chorus and windy funk guitar, the track should have been saved for Obie Trice or maybe Dr. Dre himself. The wrenching "Been Through the Storm" from Sha Money XL and Dre features a queasy, lilting chorus from Stevie Wonder (!) and Busta's best verses by far with the humane tale of his parents. Aside from that, I'm not sure I could quote any other song on the album. This isn't always the idea, as on Timbo's jungle-clunker "Get Down," one of the most obvious tracks he's ever made. The drum programming is reliably astounding, but Tim appears to have left his trusty keyboard at the gym, leaving Busta hanging on the vine with nothing to say.
Like LL Cool J, another Paleolithic MC still chugging along with a release this year, a guest appears on nearly every song here, sapping the songs of the grit Busta seems to be aping and making it sound more like Busta Rhymes Presents...Clusterfuck. Songs better left to their guests, like Raekwon's backroom swaggerfest "Goldmine" and Nas' paranoid formalism ("My interest: your departure") on "Don't Get Carried Away," would sound better on their own forthcoming albums. What Busta Rhymes doesn't seem to realize is that all we want from him is unhinged energy and good humor. And good videos. The importance he (and his record label) seems to be placing on this release has clouded his memory of what made The Coming and When Disaster Strikes enjoyable, if non-classic, material. The fluidity of his vocal patterns is still impressive, but to what end? Does anyone buy it when he claims he'll "kill a snitch for the feds?" Is a posthumous Rick James guest spot actually that impressive? Lest we forget Rick James' standing in the world pre-Chappelle. It's just another example of the pomp that passes for poignant on The Big Bang.
Just thinking about how much money and energy was squandered on this album is maddening enough to make me want to start trying to justifying it. But there's no apology for "The Legend of the Fall Offs," perhaps the least self-aware track of the year. On it Bus solemnly raps, "Alone in the mirror you look at yourself and you smile/disregarding the fact that your run has been done for a while/refuse to acknowledge the truth like the mind of a child/continue fronting like it's nothing while you live in denial." And with that, we bid farewell to the emperor's new clothes.
