Many legendary hip-hop acts have taken part in Verzuz battles: Ja Rule, Fat Joe, Dipset, The LOX, Ludacris, Nelly, DMX, Snoop Dogg, and more. Fans often debate which artists would make for a good duel. Recently, thanks to a post from Dr. Dre, many have wondered who should be pitted against Eminem. Swizz Beatz, who created Verzuz with Timbaland, mentioned Busta Rhymes as an opponent, but many disagreed with this recommendation.
“Busta Rhymes would EAT Eminem in a #VERZUZ battle!”
One of those people includes E-40, who shared his opinion on a proposed Eminem-Busta mash-up during a recent interview. “Busta Rhymes would eat Eminem in a Verzuz battle. I really believe that,” E-40 said. “Busta Rhymes goes crazy. Because, now, it’s turned into a performance type of situation. Busta Rhymes is animated. He got gas. He raps fast, all that. He do all that stuff that Eminem do. And Busta Rhymes got up-tempo slaps that get the party goin‘. Anytime you got up-tempo slaps, you’re gonna win.”
E-40 also made sure to highlight praise the other rapper. “Eminem is so legendary,” he noted. “You know, definitely. Can’t take nothing away from him. Great hits, great style—I mean, he’s legendary, he’s an icon …” He went on to say, “I feel like Busta Rhymes gots what it takes to bring it to the surface, man, to let people say, ‘Damn, I didn’t even know he had all these hits, man’ …” he said. “The stuff he did with Mariah (Carey) and the stuff he did with Craig Mack, and he got his own slaps, bro. And he’s animated.”
You can listen to E-40’s comments in the video above.
Of all the many rap beefs in the history of hip-hop, none has been as brutally dissected — and deadly — as Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac’s East Coast/West Coast spat. Things reached a head when Tupac dropped the supremely insulting “Hit ‘Em Up” in June of 1996, which besides being lyrically pointed at Big, Puff and Mobb Deep, rode samples of two Junior Mafia tracks in “Get Money” and “Player’s Anthem.”
While Biggie got his shots own shots in over the years (“Who Shot Ya?” came out months after Tupac was shot at Quad Studios in November of 1994, although Biggie never admitted it being pointed at Tupac), there was more in store from Biggie that never fully materialized the way he ended it to. In an interview with The Art Of Dialogue, Junior Mafia member and Biggie’s cousin, Lil Cease, shed more light on the epic beef and what might have happened if things went as planned:
“Big wasn’t gonna put forth a full effort into a whole full song dissing Tupac… Big was kinda more like just sprinkling on it,” Cease said of “The Ugliest,” a J-Dilla produced track that featured Busta Rhymes. Biggie delivered the verse, “And the winner is, not that thinner kid / Bandanas, tattoos, my fist never bruise / Land still cruise, Frank White paid his dues.” While Tupac wasn’t name-checked, it was clear who the lyrics was pointed at, and the diss was strong enough for Busta to not put the song on the album it was earmarked for, The Coming, but this was hardly the epic shot that Biggie thought he could take with a little help.
Cease says the original plan was for Nas and Busta to do the heavy lifting on the diss which could have really lit a fire under the beef. But that’s not how it went down.
“It’s not a diss if you don’t say their name. Ya gotta say somebody’s name if you wanna call it a ‘diss record’” Cease says. “If you’re just throwing subliminals, that’s only for that man to hear and figure out ’cause you’re gonna say something that only he would understand like, ‘Alright, he’s talking about me.’ Big didn’t say his name… It was for Busta Rhymes’ song at that. The song never came out — supposed to been Busta Rhymes, Nas and Big. It was produced by Q-Tip. But everybody never did their verse after Big did his. Nobody laid the verse on it, so the song kinda just pushed away. ”
Nevermind that Cease confuses Dilla with Q-Tip as the song’s producer (Tip was famously J Dilla’s manager), but had Nas and Busta joined Biggie in the spat, “The Ugliest” could very well have topped “Hit ‘Em Up” as the piece de resistance of the Tupac/Biggie beef.
Although it has been literal decades since Snoop Dogg was a legitimately menacing presence in hip-hop, that doesn’t mean he can’t occasionally tap into that mode when the mood calls for it. In the case of his new song “Murder Music,” it’s absolutely called for. However, just in case his Corona commercials softened up his image too much to be taken that seriously, he smartly calls on some of rap’s past and current prime purveyors of murder music — namely, Griselda’s Benny The Butcher, the resurgent Jadakiss, and the eternal Busta Rhymes.
Benny sets things off, declaring the ominous beat by Nottz “what they gone play when they wipe the prints off they hammers.” Then, Jadakiss reminds listeners that “it ain’t no reward for the streets.” Busta Rhymes bats cleanup, reminiscing on his rowdy battle rap past, recalling that “I don’t discriminate, I even bodied close peers.” Snoop holds down the hook, which is nice and simple, driving the “murder music” theme through repetition.
The song is set to appear on Snoop Dogg’s upcoming compilation album, Algorithm. At a recent listening session at his Compound in Los Angeles attended by Uproxx, Snoop said the project will operate as a showcase of the talent, past and present, on Def Jam, celebrating Snoop’s new position there as executive creative and strategic consultant. Algorithm is due November 19.
“‘Fat Joe scared to do Verzuz with Busta Rhymes’ and so is everybody else.” So says… Fat Joe, who spoke on the possibility on his latest Friday live stream on Instagram. Amid talking about all the hot topics heading into the weekend, Joe touched on his recent Verzuz battle with Ja Rule, addressing the fan criticism that he’d ducked a similar faceoff against the other hip-hop legend, whose career of hits extends back 30 years to his breakout appearance on A Tribe Called Quest’s seminal posse cut, “Scenario.”
In defending himself, Joe praised Busta’s legacy and untouchable record of fan-favorite jams. “You gotta understand, sometimes you ever notice — you seen boxers and they knock everybody out?” he asked before insisting that, “People be scared to fight those boxers. Busta Rhymes is gonna out-rap, outperform anybody who goes up in a Verzuz with him. That’s a fact. Yo, Busta Rhymes, nobody wanna get in there with you, man. You might have to be an honorary — they gotta give you the check for no reason.”
Joe would know; in his battle with Ja Rule, despite his advantage in longevity, Rule pulled out way too many undeniable jams for him to keep up (it didn’t help he played a lot of his backpack rap favorites in a hits battle). Meanwhile, Rule had been taunting 50 Cent, hoping to joust with his onetime rival — who declined. Meanwhile, suitable opponents have yet to be found for other such legends like Eminem, Jay-Z, and Nas.
Last night, the MTV VMAs brought their unique blend of fun, scandal, and quirky ceremony back to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, bringing along a live audience for the first time since 2019. Doja Cat hosted, performed, and wore a truly hilarious sequence of off-the-wall costumes. Olivia Rodrigo threw her own prom. Chloe, Normani, and Teyana Taylor saluted the show’s salacious history while paying homage to their heroes. It felt like VMAs were “back,” for lack of a better term.
But while the fans in attendance seemed to be having the time of their lives, an undercurrent of discontent rippled among those watching from home, eventually bubbling up to the surface on Twitter. Viewers skewered the show for its treatment of hip-hop, which they felt had been reduced to an afterthought by the show’s attempt to cover a wide swath of musical genres and generations. While neophyte performers like The Kid Laroi teamed up with their elders like Justin Bieber (congratulations, you’re old now) and even the aging Foo Fighters got their due, for some, it seemed like hip-hop had been left in cold.
Were it not still summer, that would be a literal assessment. Performers Latto and Saint JHN performed their sets from a pavilion outside the main venue and although each was given multiple opportunities to perform — three songs each — home viewers noted that those performances basically amounted to snippets of each song functioning as advertising bumpers. One only lasted for thirty seconds, which more than one commenter observed was shorter than one of the commercials that followed it.
The only main stage rap performance came from Busta Rhymes, who’s been around as long as the Foo Fighters have and whose most recent mega-hit (“Touch It”) might actually be older than half the audience that attended. That, of course, doesn’t count Doja Cat, whose hybrid pop-R&B sound is often punctuated by secretly impressive raps honed on LA’s indie-hip-hop performance circuit (shout out to Bananas!) or Machine Gun Kelly, who still maintains a penchant for spitting the odd 16-bar missive despite ostensibly making the switch to pop-punk, emo-rock tribute. Lil Nas X may have started as a rapper, but he calls himself a pop star now. While Busta’s performance was lauded (again I ask, does the man even breathe during his “Look At Me Now” verse?), it also highlighted the VMAs’ utter lack of main stage hip-hop from this decade — of which there would certainly appear to be no shortage.
Now, we don’t know all the behind-the-scenes, contractual details. There’s still a pandemic on, and many of rap’s top names have flouted reasonable safety precautions over the past year — even Busta himself, who gave a weird, anti-mask rant just a few months ago and has always at least rapped like an anti-vaxxer, even if he might not really be one (rap is wrestling, let’s not forget). But still, there was a decided dearth of appearances from the likes of Lil Baby, Lil Durk, Lil Uzi Vert, hell, even Lil Wayne (yes, I know, hip-hop has a lot of “Lils” — if you’re still complaining about this in 2021, maybe you aren’t the audience for it. Go listen to Foo Fighters or something).
Even Travis Scott only showed up to accept his award for Best Hip-Hop Video (for “Franchise”), giving a short speech before probably bouncing from the building entirely. Plenty of hip-hop artists and videos were nominated — very few won Moon People, despite their videos’ arguable worthiness. Fans were right to be incensed. However, this is the MTV VMAs we’re talking about here. They’ve almost never given any level of serious thought to rap as a genre or hip-hop as a culture, and as mostly fan-voted awards like Artist Of The Year have shown time after time, MTV’s audience has never quite been as invested in them as much as they have pop megastars like Britney Spears and Taylor Swift (or Swift’s heir apparent, Olivia Rodrigo) — the obvious exception being Eminem, for obvious reasons.
So disappointed, but not surprised, is probably the sentiment that best describes how many of us feel about the show’s treatment of hip-hop — which is, if nothing else, reflective of how mainstream America views the perceived creators and purveyors of hip-hop. It’s just a little more disappointing after so many of the show’s efforts in 2020 to acknowledge Black Americans’ plights, making the progress feel more performative than anything. On the bright side, the ratio of Black performers was greater than it’s been since Busta and Missy ruled the VMAs (and took home a paltry handful of awards in their primes, although Missy was honored with a Vanguard Award in 2019). One of them was a gay Black man, expressing his sexuality unabashedly in a flamboyant performance preceding a win for Artist Of The Year.
That’s how progress actually looks. It’s rarely a straight line, with everything moving forward at once. Maybe we take some Ls along the way. Maybe one thing moves forward while others stay stagnant or suffer setbacks. We shouldn’t be discouraged by this. We shouldn’t overlook it either, because the only way we keep moving forward is by constantly fighting for it. But we should take stock and appreciate the wins too. Black women won last night, even if they didn’t take home as many Moon People as some would have liked. Busta Rhymes, a sometimes overlooked legend, got his flowers. Lil Nas X got to stand in a place no one like him would have just a decade ago, as Billy Porter pointed out in his introduction of the “Industry Baby” performance.
And as for Latto and Saint JHN, they got to play more songs than anyone else. Maybe those in the venue wouldn’t have seen them, but far more people watched the broadcast and got to see two of rap’s rising stars multiple times. Those who watched certainly know who they are now — which, when you think about it, is actually the point of these shows in the first place. We don’t always remember who won which award, but those performances can be the first time we fall in love. Someone somewhere did just that last night — and that’s the first step toward becoming the sort of fan-favorite with a shelf full of Moon People.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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