Busta Rhymes once picked his “favourite artist to ever exist”
For his third studio album, 1998’s Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front, Busta Rhymes really pushed the boat out. Not only did he welcome a truly unexpected guest star onto the album in the form of Ozzy Osbourne, who featured on the track ‘This Means War!!,’ but he also managed to bring his favourite ever artist on board, too. He just needed the guts to actually ask her to do it.
It all started one day while Busta was driving in his car, listening to Hot 97 on the radio. Janet Jackson was on air at the time, and she was asked a question that would, in the end, prove quite consequential. As Busta later explained to Billboard, the host of the show asked her, “Is there any hip-hop artist that you [haven’t] worked with that you would like to?” Her answer completely floored the listening rapper—because she chose him.
“I had to pull over,” he said, “because I almost crashed.” That could have been a nasty situation, but, thankfully, Busta didn’t entirely lose control of the vehicle and managed to stay on course. But clearly he’d been shocked by what he’d heard. He just wasn’t ready for Jackson to say that, because he was a massive, massive fan of hers.
“You hear artists on the radio when they’re on tour or doing a record,” he explained to Billboard, “but [it’s different] when it’s someone you really love and look up to and have been inspired by or had a crush on—and that was all of the above to me. Janet’s one of my favourite artists ever to exist in the world. To hear her say that was one of the biggest highlights of my life.”
Busta Rhymes was in dreamland, simply by hearing Jackson say that, theoretically, she would like to work with him. But things got even better after he instructed his management team to actually get out there and reach out to Jackson. “I told them to get [Janet] on the phone,” he recalled. “[My manager] got Janet on the phone and interestingly enough I told Janet, ‘I had the perfect song for her,’ and I didn’t even have the song yet.”
That was a bold move on Busta’s part, one that could easily have backfired. He’d promised his hero a song, and now he actually had to deliver it. A lesser artist might have folded in such a situation, but, with his reputation on the line, and his musical hero’s attention fixed onto him, he somehow managed to come through. He and Jackson did, in his own words, find “the perfect song, once I said all that I had to deliver.”
It’s an impressive feat, but Busta believes he’s just able to handle high stakes like that well. “I guess I’m pretty good under pressure,” he said. “I got with the right people to collaborate and put the song together, which ended up becoming one of the most historical moments of my career.”
The song he and Jackson made together, “What’s It Gonna Be?!,” was a hit. Marking the first time Jackson had ever appeared on a rap song, it reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100, which made it Busta’s best-performing single as a lead artist. He had rolled the dice, and it had come off perfectly for him.