Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett Busta Rhymes: "His Death Stopped My Career!" Busta Rhymes Finally Opens Up About His Grief, Nearly Dying & How He Turned His Life Around! About this episode If you enjoy hearing about inside the music industry and its artists, I recommend you check out my conversation with will.i.am, which you can find here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-2QhqdlfI
From Trevor to Busta, love of the rap game to global success, and rock bottom to rebirth. This is Busta Rhymes as you’ve never heard him.
Trevor George Smith Jr. or ‘Busta Rhymes’, first reached fame with the hip-hop group, ‘Leaders of the New School’, and began his solo rap career in 1996, since then has released 11 studio albums and received 12 Grammy Award nominations for his work.
In this conversation Busta and Steven discuss topics, such as:
Growing up in the hood
Starting out in music
Becoming an MC by accident
Using rap as a way out of work
Becoming addicted to entertaining and the reaction of people to his raps
Rapping to protect himself
Selling crack at 12 years old
Failure not being an option for his father
His father standing in the way of his musical career
Getting booed off stage early in his career
His mother signing his record deal at 17 years old
What lessons he would tell his kids to reach success
Why you need to be selfish to reach success
His manger dying in 2012
How his manager taught him ever he knew
His emotional down turn
How his whole life was going in a totally different direction
Why he couldn’t figure himself out
Being on steroid pills
How his son thought he was going to die
You can listen to Busta’s newest album ‘Blockbusta’, here: https://spoti.fi/40UxsvS
Follow Busta:
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3t0odO6
Twitter: https://bit.ly/3QT9YTc
Follow me:
https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo
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Transcript 14,115 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Steven Bartlett? This is the Busta Rhymes that none of us have ever seen before. Busta Rhymes says it himself, this is a Busta Rhymes that nobody's ever seen before.
0:09 Steven Bartlett? You will walk away from this conversation, understanding not only what it takes to reach the very peak of your powers, but to stay there for 33 years, to have the insane consistency, discipline, dedication, and in his words, addiction to something that will take you to the very top. But then also you'll see the forces in life that take you from that peak to the deepest depths of darkness. And once you're in that darkness, how do you rise from it? How did Busta take himself from the darkest moment of his life that he's really not talked about ever before, back to the peak of his powers? This is a human story. It's one of the most inspiring stories we've ever had on this
0:53 Steven Bartlett? show. And it's a side of a guy that we've known for many, many decades that I have never seen before.
1:06 Steven Bartlett? Busta, sometimes I think that with maturity and with age, we're able to look back at our earliest years and connect dots that only our maturity and only our own growth and development allow us to connect. And those dots sometimes indicate to us why and how we became the person we are today. And that's really what I'm so compelled to understand with you is, what is that early context that you look back on now and you go, the reason I am the man I am today sat here is because of this early context and these things and these people. What is that?
1:39 Speaker 01 Honestly, I have to say it starts with my mother and my father.
1:47 Speaker 01 My mother and my father was strict, you know what I'm saying? And they also made sure that I didn't need for nothing. I was able to really enjoy what it was to be a child. And, you know, I don't, I don't have to sit here and mislead people like I come from some poor struggle and I come from this, this hood shit. Like, yeah, I was in the hood. I was in Brooklyn, East Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York. And I was in the hood with enough of the goons and the hooligans, but.
2:23 Speaker 01 The difference about our era and the way you you mostly hear artists try to portray it now. Is even the guys that was the goons and the gangsters and the troublemakers in the street, they had respect. And they had integrity and they understood what it was to have proper manners like.
2:41 Speaker 01 If my mother. As serious as she was. Saw any of the other kids in the street, it was the like, I'm giving you an example of how it really literally took a village to raise a child like. None of the neighbors on the block would see another child that they watched grow from a little boy. Into becoming a teenager or something and see that kid misbehaving and not reprimand him in the street. Even if they not his parent. So. My neighbors had permission to to bust my ass if I was misbehaving. And then they would tell my mother and if my mother felt like. I misrepresented her to make another neighbor have to discipline me. That was gonna get me another ass beating, so you ended up getting two ass beatings.
3:25 Speaker 01 For every one trouble that you caused, you know what I'm saying? And and that's that shit was important because. I think that as a community. That shit is something that's it doesn't exist anymore, you can't tell nobody else kid nothing. Kids ain't trying to listen to you tell them nothing. They'll lift up something and fling it after you or or or go upside your head. And disrespect you because there's just a totally different. Value in the way things are done in the community. So it starts with my parents. And the way I was raised in it in the house to have respect for my parents. Have respect for my other elders, even if he wasn't my parent and also.
4:08 Speaker 01 Even if he was dudes that was in the street, you still an elder, we had to respect you as an elder. And in return, that same respect that came from the house. And you, whenever you went abroad and you conducted yourself in that manner, it would garnish the same respect in return. So even if it was a dude in the street on some street shit, the respect that you showed to that elder, still warranted a certain respect from them. They wouldn't disrespect the respect that you was raised in your house to have for your family and for them. So that respect was upheld and it was, that integrity was defended.
4:49 Speaker 01 And that was a real solid foundation that all of the other floors was built on, which eventually evolved into becoming a skyscraper for me. So I'mma start there with the kids. And I'mma, I'mma go to the neighborhood because again, when my parents was around, I got the same discipline and from the neighbors, the hardworking, middle-class families, the less fortunate families that were still in the neighborhood. We all was on the same accord about discipline and respect.
5:21 Steven Bartlett? Was it, was it easy to see when you look back how you could have gone another way in that context?
5:26 Speaker 01 Absolutely, because all of those things were still there. The drug dealing was still there, the shootings were still happening, the robberies were still happening, all of that was there, right? But the beautiful thing was, there was a serious presence of balance that was just as impressionable as all of the things that was the negative presence that was strong and that did get a stronghold on a lot of the youth in the community at the time too.
5:57 Steven Bartlett? How come you didn't go the other way?
5:58 Speaker 01 I did.
6:01 Speaker 01 I did. I just was fortunate enough to have something like hip-hop that was able to be an alternative that saved my life, changed my life. And I had some incredible people that was around me to support
6:15 Speaker 01 me when I found this interest and, and I identified with my gift as an artist to be able to.
6:28 Speaker 01 Entertain people, perform,
6:33 Speaker 01 articulate my thoughts through song and rhyme form. And I had an incredible support system with my moms. I had an incredible support system with just the other friends and family that I grew up with that was in the community. And then, last but not least, the determination that I had to wanna be able to not disappoint the people that I knew that really was proud of what I was doing, good, bad, or indifferent.
7:01 Steven Bartlett? Who were they?
7:03 Speaker 01 It was, it was all of them.
7:05 Steven Bartlett? All of them.
7:05 Speaker 01 Right? So, for example, I pissed my moms off when I decided I wanted to start selling weed and selling crack, right?
7:14 Speaker 01 And the guys that was in the street that I was doing it with,
7:19 Speaker 01 when they realized, even though I was doing it and it was cool for us to do it, they didn't really want us to do it. When they started to see that we had potential to do other things that was gonna keep us safe and keep us away from the street. A lot of the time, they didn't have a better opportunity to offer us. So, they made sure that they was as present as they could be to guide us through the shit that they didn't even want us to do in the first place, which was the stupidness we was carrying on with in the street.
7:47 Speaker 01 So, they did everything they could to minimize the bullshit that we would get into, so we don't get killed, so we don't go to jail, so, you know, none of that shit would happen. But, once they realized they didn't have a better opportunity for us, that is what they felt was the best that they could do. If that, if we're gonna do the bullshit, we gotta be there to protect them and make sure that they straighten, we guide them, so that they could do it the best way with the least amount of bullshit.
8:13 Steven Bartlett? As a younger?
8:14 Speaker 01 As a younger kid, right? When they started to see that this rapping thing and this hip-hop shit and breakdancing and graffiti and DJing and all of that shit was something that we started to generate interest for, that's when they started to encourage us to do that more.
8:31 Steven Bartlett? Instead of cracking?
8:32 Speaker 01 Instead of selling the drugs, instead of selling weed, instead of stealing this and taking that. So, they were so happy to see we found another way. They wanted us to do that. So, the more we did that... If we started to show them in the indication as we was making progress that we wasn't continuing to be productive, now it felt like you was pissing off two sets of parents.
9:01 Speaker 01 I'm already pissing off my parents because I'm with them in the street. Now they see me doing this music shit, they like that shit, they proud of me. So if I'm not doing well in that, now I'm disappointing them too.
9:12 Steven Bartlett? What was the consequence of your parents separating at 11 years old? Because I think about me being 11 years old, I remember a conversation, my mom, my mom's Nigerian, I was born in Botswana, my dad's English.
9:20 Speaker 01 Right.
9:20 Steven Bartlett? I remember around that age, about 10 years old, my parents calling me and basically telling me they didn't love each other anymore. And it was like the world had broken in half.
9:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:29 Steven Bartlett? It's like you can't comprehend the concept of these two people being separate. It's like being torn into two pieces.
9:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:35 Steven Bartlett? How was it for you at 11 years old when you find that out?
9:38 Speaker 01 It was disastrous for me because, like you said, you can't really ever wrap your head around that. As a child, you don't know how to conceptualize that, like, um.
9:50 Speaker 01 Obviously, there was things that I was able to do and it was enjoyment I was able to have when I spent time with my father that I couldn't get when I was with my mother.
10:01 Speaker 01 There was things that I was always able to get as far as nurturing and being cared for and being babied for my mother that I couldn't get for my father. And obviously divine order is mother and father to make baby, right? So I definitely didn't want to lose neither one of them.
10:19 Steven Bartlett? Did you change?
10:21 Speaker 01 I definitely changed because, um, I wasn't, um, I couldn't figure out how to find my, my, my, uh.
10:31 Speaker 01 The, the, the behaved kid that I was, even though I was still getting into shit.
10:38 Speaker 01 The, the bullshit really started once my mother and my father got a divorce. The misbehaving really started picking up, the, the disrespect started to pick up and intensified. The anger was just a lot more.
10:53 Steven Bartlett? Why?
10:53 Speaker 01 It overwhelmed me more because I was just, I wasn't happy with my situation. And then I wasn't happy with.
11:03 Speaker 01 The the way that I was directly impacted by their beef. So like.
11:10 Speaker 01 You know, there would be times when.
11:13 Speaker 01 If my mother and my father wasn't getting along.
11:17 Speaker 01 Fresh discrepancy between the two of them. Say like. The day of my father supposed to pick up me and my brother, because I only got one younger brother. And say he supposed to come and pick us up on this day and particularly for his visitation weekend. If an argument.
11:35 Speaker 01 Started with the two of them that morning.
11:43 Speaker 01 You know, my father would get to the house and then my mother wouldn't even let us go. And we would look and see him in the front of the house from the window.
11:52 Speaker 01 And my moms would just be on some bullshit.
11:56 Steven Bartlett? How did you feel looking at him from the window?
11:58 Speaker 01 It was fucking crazy.
11:59 Steven Bartlett? You wanted to go, I'm guessing?
12:00 Speaker 01 Of course, you know what I'm saying? Because there was things and there was other family that obviously. Was on my father's side. Cousins and kids from the neighborhoods of the cousins. Uh, part of Brooklyn or Queens and different areas of New York that we would go, that we had friends and.
12:23 Speaker 01 With the family and with the neighborhood friends that we met through our other family and other c- cousins and. Things of that nature in the different neighborhoods. We we we wouldn't get to see these people. Until dad came to get us because. Moms wasn't cool really with that side of the family like that. My father's side of the family wasn't really rocking with my mother's side of the family like that. So if that rotation didn't happen in the visits. We didn't get to enjoy that. We missed our dad. We was only get to. Getting the opportunity to see him, you know, once a week, once every two weeks or sometimes once a month if. Then they beefing with each other.
13:00 Steven Bartlett? Did did your relationship with your father at that point kind of become a bit strained when because of that beef? Did you start to see him less and less and less?
13:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, I I think my conflict with my father. It started to happen more and more because um.
13:16 Speaker 01 You know, obviously, um.
13:21 Speaker 01 The lack of a parent's presence has an effect in different ways, right?
13:27 Speaker 01 And as a son, I don't know what it is, but I just think instinctually,
13:33 Speaker 01 boys cling on to their moms more. I don't know if that's always the case, but in most cases, that's usually what it is. I think my father's personality was a little conflicting for me with the way my personality was. And the contrast of my father's personality as opposed to my mother's personality, it drew conflict for me too. Because my father, he wasn't as interested in the shit that I wanted to do or that the shit that I was interested in as a child. Like, he always was more serious about
14:17 Speaker 01 whatever he felt was best for my future was all that mattered. It wasn't about what I thought, it was about what he thought. So I always started to feel like, and having the comparison and seeing the contrast between that and how supportive my mother was for the shit that I wanted to do? Like, you know,
14:40 Speaker 01 first time I got some pussy, I could come tell my mother. I could sit down and tell my mother about how that felt, you know what I'm saying? I could sit and tell my moms about, you know, my first wet dream or some shit. I could, I could talk to my moms about the music that I'm making in the studio with with my crew, leaders at the new school at the time. And I could come home and I could play that shit in the house. I could turn up the shit. Just as long as I could do, just as long as I did what I was supposed to in the house, my mother was with all the other shit as long as it was productive and it kept me away from the trouble in the street. That was relieving for her. My father,
15:21 Speaker 01 you tried to talk to him at the time about some rap shit. He was like, "I don't want to hear that shit. That shit is a bunch of bullshit." And you wasting your time with that shit. That's how I used to talk. You know what I'm saying?
15:34 Speaker 01 Now, at that time, I didn't respect it. And at that time, I, I, I felt a way, I felt real fucked up about that because it was just like...
15:46 Speaker 01 I could be doing some real bullshit like I I'm I'm actually still one foot in. Because I'm not, I'm I haven't succeeded at this. This shit don't make me no money. I do this shit because I love it. Like, I just love it. So when I'm able to do shit that I love with with my friends that and with my people that.
16:08 Speaker 01 I'm entertained by doing it with them.
16:13 Speaker 01 It's because I have this thing with a crew that there's a collective. Enjoyment that we're getting from doing this music shit.
16:23 Steven Bartlett? Are you still trying to prove him wrong to some degree? Did you find yourself trying to prove him wrong then?
16:27 Speaker 01 Nah, because I got my opportunity to do it.
16:30 Steven Bartlett? But before that moment.
16:31 Speaker 01 At that time?
16:32 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, yeah.
16:33 Speaker 01 Absolutely, I was trying to prove him wrong. I was so determined to prove him wrong that it it it forced me to excel. Because the more that he wanted me to do what he wanted me to do.
16:45 Steven Bartlett? Which was?
16:47 Speaker 01 My father was a licensed electrical contractor.
16:49 Steven Bartlett? Okay, okay.
16:50 Speaker 01 So he used to force me to come to work. His way of keeping me off the street was bringing me to work with him because. He had his own.
17:01 Speaker 01 Company as a licensed electrical contractor.
17:04 Steven Bartlett? How did you feel about that?
17:05 Speaker 01 I was disgusted with that shit because we working in these nasty fucking buildings with rats and roaches running around and shit and. It took childhood time for me because I wasn't able to be outside and play. That's really what I wanted to do.
17:16 Steven Bartlett? And how old were you then? Twelve?
17:19 Speaker 01 It started a little younger than that, but right around twelve is when it got serious. I would say like around ten years old was when it started. Twelve is when it got serious because my mother used to send us to different countries every summer. With my father, just so we could be able to explore what it was like to live in Jamaica for a summer with the family. Same shit with England. My mother would send us to England. So when I was.
17:48 Speaker 01 Around, there was one summer we came out here. You were ten. I was like ten, eleven. My brother was younger than me, like seven. I'm staying in Morecambe in them time and Preston. And we went to karate school here, we went to primary school here. And we was breakdancing and I had these cousins that used to name Samantha and Michaela. They used to take me in vow, they used to take me to these little clubs. Cause they used to bring us to like this little area where it was like a, uh. I wouldn't call it a downtown area, but there was an area like a downtown area in the Morecambe area and in the Preston area and in the Blackpool area.
18:31 Speaker 01 And we would go and we would breakdance out there with the young kids that was from England. And, you know, we had our style of doing shit from New York. And we, we, we was, we was getting, we was some dangerous little motherfuckers now. Let me, you know, we was getting busy, we was making it happen. We's, you know, we twisting up and popping and all of this shit. So it was, it was something where we just became a part of this breakdance community. And they was always looking forward to seeing us. We would go out there like three, four times a week. Other people, promoters, they would see us, they started to book us to come in their clubs. Obviously we're too young to go in a club. So they would let us come perform ten minutes, fifteen minutes, and then we would have to leave immediately.
19:12 Speaker 01 So we made a little money that way, get a little ten pounds here for show, a little twenty pounds there for show. But this, these are the things that we grew around. So when I, when I was around all of this and that started to slow down.
19:28 Speaker 01 Dad was like, okay, y'all ain't going nowhere this summer, you're coming to work. Do I wanna go to work? No. Do I wanna be an electrician? No. Do I wanna be fucking pulling BX cable through sheet rock? No. Do I wanna be hammering nails and then bang my fingers? No. Do I wanna see rats and fucking roaches crawling over my shoes and my timbaland boots? And I don't wanna do none of that. And I'm watching kids riding up and down and pop a wheelie in on the bike and music playing outside and I can't do that shit. I was, I used to be super angry at that shit every day with my father. What did you wanna do instead?
20:08 Speaker 01 I wanted to rap, I wanted to make music, I wanted to breakdance, I wanted to do all the shit that hip hop. Consisted of, like I became the embodiment of hip hop and it was the thing that was my excuse to not go to work. Why did you wanna rap? Well, number one,
20:29 Speaker 01 I wanted to be the DJ first. Okay. You know what I'm saying? The DJ thing to me though,
20:38 Speaker 01 I never really got good at it to be the DJ. I was able to do it, but I was never nice enough to become the superstar DJ. And at that time,
20:53 Speaker 01 the DJ was super important because all of the groups had the DJ name. So the Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Jam Master J, Run DMC, like the DJ was always the solo. It was like he was the big shot.
21:12 Speaker 01 So when I, I couldn't, I'm not really the technology dude, you know what I'm saying? So all of this
21:18 Speaker 01 equipment shit, like it was just a little complicated for me. And then
21:26 Speaker 01 I actually became an MC by accident. And the interesting part about that was
21:36 Speaker 01 I caught two charges selling crack by the time I was 12.
21:43 Speaker 01 And fortunately, the laws was different and I was a minor. So
21:51 Speaker 01 I didn't see no serious trouble, but I was definitely on my way to getting into some serious trouble. If I didn't, if my mother didn't say, all right, enough of this shit, we gotta get you out of here.
22:07 Speaker 01 That's when she took me from Brooklyn and brought me to Long Island. When I got to Long Island, that's when I met Brown. C. Brown from Leaders of the New School. Dinko D. from Leaders of the New School. Malo is my mother's sister's son, so he's my first blood cousin. But before we brought in Malo, it was, and even before we brought in Dinko, it was me, Dinko, and another dude named Mystery. Mystery was hustling in the street too. But when we went to Long Island now, a lot of other families was thinking like my mother. They brought their kids from Brooklyn too, to Long Island. From Queens to Long Island, from the Bronx to Long Island.
22:48 Speaker 01 So, we left the neighborhood, which is the hood we was raised in, we left the hood to come to the suburbs and still be around a bunch of kids from the hood.
23:00 Speaker 01 You know what I'm saying? So the same shit you was running from, we found a way to do the same shit in these nice neighborhoods now. And here we come as the generation terrorizing these beautiful neighborhoods. And...
23:17 Speaker 01 We fucked these neighborhoods up.
23:19 Steven Bartlett? When you say you became an accidental MC?
23:22 Speaker 01 This is what happened. I wasn't rapping yet. I was only breakdancing, I was only popping, and I was DJing a little bit, and I was messing around with the graffiti.
23:34 Speaker 01 I wasn't rapping yet. So, when I moved to Long Island, I meet Charlie Brown. I meet Mystery. And...
23:47 Speaker 01 What ends up happening...
23:52 Speaker 01 Is, in this junior high school now, they got like these lip sync contests, they got rap contests, and, you know, we now finally getting a chance to experience what it's like to have us be in school where you have periods, different periods in classes, and you're in one class for forty-five minutes to an hour, then the bell rings and then you switch, I got the hallway action, everybody talking shit, go to the next class, flirt with a couple of chicks on the way to the next class. So all of that interaction is starting now. Puberty kicking in crazy. You know, you thirteen years old, twelve, thirteen, now you're starting to get your hormones is moving different. So...
24:32 Speaker 01 Obviously, you're going through the stage in your life now where you want to impress everybody. You want to, you want to be the cool guy in school. So, whenever you came to Long Island from the five boroughs,
24:48 Speaker 01 it was a thing. Oh, that's the new kid from Brooklyn. Oh, that's the new kid from Queens. Oh, that's the new kid from Bronx. That's the new kid from Staten Island. So, me being one of the new kids from Brooklyn, it created this talk. And
25:10 Speaker 01 the rapping thing is happening. Charlie Brown was like the guy. He was like the, the, the number one rap dude in school at the time.
25:22 Speaker 01 So, one day, I'm coming out of the school.
25:25 Speaker 01 And we get in the schoolyard and, you know, some of the kids waiting on the school buses. Some of the kids is waiting to see, you know, the football game or the basketball game after school. There was like a cypher that was formed in this particular day, and it was a big one. And it was C. Brown rapping and two other kids. And then, uh, C. Brown was getting most of the shine.
25:50 Speaker 01 I walks over to the cypher and I started beatboxing, right? And, uh, Brown, he, he, he doing his rap shit to my beatbox or whatever. And, you know, I'm keeping the beat going for him. And then, um,
26:10 Speaker 01 everything was smooth in the beginning, like, you know, he was just rhyming. Everything was cool and, you know, he sounded good.
26:17 Speaker 01 And then I probably like a good thirty, forty seconds into it, he just started disrespecting me. So, I'm beatboxing for him and he dissing me. And I'm, I'm, I'm kind of like torn between, should I punch this dude in his face? Or should I just keep beatboxing and not be the party pooper of the party energy that we have in here?
26:39 Steven Bartlett? And you how old?
26:40 Speaker 01 I was twelve. I was, I was thirteen now. And I'm saying to myself, I'm from Brooklyn.
26:51 Speaker 01 And the mentality back then was, everybody from Long Island was pussy. You know, it's the suburbs, it's the green grass, it's the flower beds, it's the, the, the, the nice houses. We come from, from, from concrete jungle, we come from projects, we come from struggle, so...
27:12 Speaker 01 I'm looking at this dude, and I'm just looking at him like, I'mma fuck you up in like, two seconds because you a pussy to me, but you disrespecting me in front of all of these people. And if I don't do something, then they gonna look at me like I'm a pussy too, so...
27:26 Speaker 01 As I'm getting ready to do something stupid, the rhyme stopped, like he was done, and...
27:36 Speaker 01 Everybody was bigging him up and, you know, I ain't wanna look like a sore loser, even though there was no battle, he just chose to diss me for no reason. And I couldn't understand it, cuz I'm like, yo, I'm here to support you right now, I'm giving you the beat and the whole shit, the fuck you doing?
27:52 Speaker 01 Long story short, that was the day.
27:57 Speaker 01 I said, "All right, I'mma go home,
28:01 Speaker 01 and I'mma write a rhyme tonight, and I'mma come back tomorrow, and I'mma fucking disrespect this youth in front of everybody, the same way he dissed me up in front of everybody." And the next day, I came to school, I waited all day, I ain't tell nobody shit. We got back in that same yard, nice big crowd the next day.
28:29 Speaker 01 He rapping again, I started beatboxing for him again, like, like, like, it's the exact thing happening like the day before. So we going and I'm doing what I'm doing and everything is cool and nobody ain't got no clue, cuz I didn't say shit to nobody about having raps ready.
28:49 Speaker 01 And the crazy shit is, when I wrote my rhymes...
28:54 Speaker 01 I was listening to a bunch of LL Cool J shit. Because at the time LL was battling everybody on record, you know what I'm saying? Battling Kumo D, battle Ice T, battle, you know, he was just, he was the one that was trying to take everybody head off. And I was like, yo, I wanna come like LL so I could tear this boy head off. So I ended up doing my shit and somehow it went from me beatboxing to him.
29:24 Speaker 01 And for him to me telling him, yo, why don't you do a beat for me?
29:29 Speaker 01 And he was like, oh, you got raps ready today? I'd like to do a beat. Let me just try something.
29:35 Speaker 01 So he did the beat and I started off the rhyme on some calm shit. And then when I started to get into the disrespect lines, that's when the, the whole thing just started to happen on its own, like.
29:50 Speaker 01 My frustration and then me seeing the people reacting to my shit, the way that I wanted them to. It just made me more confident, more cocky, more charismatic. And that's when the whole Busta Rhymes thing started to happen. And my name wasn't even Busta Rhymes at the time. I had a fucked up rap name at the time.
30:16 Steven Bartlett? What was it?
30:19 Speaker 01 Yo, my name was terrible, yo. My name at the time.
30:25 Speaker 01 I had two. I had my name from being a part of the 5% Nation of the Gods and Earth, which that name was cooler. That was Lord Tahim, right? But somehow I abandoned that to become
30:44 Speaker 01 like the rappers that had three-part names, right?
30:48 Steven Bartlett? Is there a reason you're not telling me?
30:49 Speaker 01 I'm getting to it. I'm just trying to help with, I'm setting up with the proper prerequisite. So LL Cool J is a three-part man.
31:01 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
31:01 Speaker 01 Jam Master J is a three-part name. All of the guys from the Fat Boys, Prince, Marky D, Cool Rock Ski, them dudes had three-part names, right?
31:16 Speaker 01 I changed my name to Chill Oski.
31:28 Speaker 01 That name is so fucking terrible. I know, I'm sorry, bro. Name was terrible. And you know what's so crazy? I kept that name for a long time because I really thought it was the shit because I felt like.
31:41 Steven Bartlett? Chill Oski.
31:42 Speaker 01 Chill Oski, bro. Terrible. I know it's terrible. But I, I, I really was proud of like, I, I got a three-part name, like my favorites. And if you want to be like your favorites, you gotta do the shit that is a replication of your favorites. And then I destroyed Charlie Brown so bad that at the end of that night, the end of that little battle, that afternoon after school, he, he just came over to the side and was like, yo, we should be in a group together.
32:22 Steven Bartlett? And that's really the day that I guess Busta Rhymes, I guess it's a catalyst moment, the day Busta was born. You talked about how that kind of moment helped you develop your style and your charisma and the way you carried yourself. And from then till when you get signed at seventeen years old, I'm curious about what happens in that moment. Because that's really, you know, a lot of people at twelve years old or ten years old or whatever want to be hip hop actors, hip hop stars, or they want to be whatever, they want to be musicians. But very, very few make it to the top table. What happens between the playground that day and seventeen years old, you getting signed? When you look back and go, it was for that reason? Was it natural talent? Is it hard work? Is it all of the above?
33:06 Speaker 01 It's, it's all of the above, but the first thing for me was the addiction to the reaction that I was getting from the people and I was seeing it and how it felt in real time. And just, just, just looking at the fact that I came up with something in my crib, by myself, in my bedroom.
33:34 Speaker 01 That was fueled by a determination of wanting to defend myself like a fight.
33:42 Speaker 01 And a lot of the times,
33:47 Speaker 01 I don't think I might have said it like this. I've said it before, but I don't think I've said it a lot.
33:53 Speaker 01 I don't know if it would have been, I had the same desire to wanna be in hip hop. I had the same desire to wanna rhyme, DJ, but I don't know if if that moment didn't happen. I don't know if I would have pursued being an MC.
34:12 Speaker 01 At that time, it probably wouldn't have happened.
34:15 Steven Bartlett? I've sat here with a lot of people who are comedians and entertainers and actors in the biggest movies in the world. And it's so interesting to me that there tends to be an early catalyst moment where they perform maybe in front of the family at Christmas.
34:30 Speaker 01 Right.
34:31 Steven Bartlett? Or on stage or whatever it is, and they get this reaction. And in that moment, that reaction does something to them on a psychological level, which becomes, as the word you used is the word I hear, becomes this addiction.
34:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:42 Steven Bartlett? And I often wonder to myself, because a lot of other people will experience that reaction and not develop the addiction.
34:47 Speaker 01 Right.
34:48 Steven Bartlett? So the reaction, it appears to me, is doing something for those people that they needed at that moment.
34:53 Speaker 01 Yes, I needed it at that moment. I want to tell you something. It it actually happened before that. To wanna be an MC happened in that moment.
35:05 Speaker 01 The addiction to entertaining people, that shit happened when I was like seven, eight years old. Maybe even six, six years old, because where it started for me initially was, you know, at the time, and particularly like I was saying how the neighborhood was back then and how we was raised in our house back then. My mother and my father, you know, we had to go to bed at nine o'clock on a school night. And
35:37 Speaker 01 on the weekends, when we was that young, we might be able to stay up until about ten o'clock, but we still had to go to bed by a certain time.
35:45 Speaker 01 When my mother had company, or like my father, and they had like family and friends or, you know, they just had their little grown up get togethers.
35:55 Speaker 01 And they get to drinking a little bit. Sometimes, you know, they so entertained by each other's company, they forget to send us to bed at nine o'clock. They playing music and shit. And I used to have to do things. I would try to creatively come up with ways to avoid being sent to bed at nine o'clock. So when they playing music, the first thing that I would always get into doing is
36:23 Speaker 01 reenactments of Michael Jackson and from the Jackson Five and James Brown dance routines. So I used to do that shit and I was nice with the fucking split and spinning around and shit and carry it on us.
36:41 Speaker 01 I'm doing all type of shit and I'm
36:45 Speaker 01 for hours until I literally would be sweating through my clothes. But it was so entertaining that sometimes
36:56 Speaker 01 the whole company that was there for my family, my mother and my father, they ended up cheering me on and rooting me on to continue and
37:07 Speaker 01 bigging up my moms about how much talent her son has and.
37:11 Steven Bartlett? Was it not that feeling then that you were chasing?
37:13 Speaker 01 That's what it was first. That's what I was saying like. I I wasn't thinking about being no rapper then, but I I knew what that feeling felt like.
37:25 Speaker 01 And I always wanted that feeling. And that feeling started in the crib and then it translated into me
37:37 Speaker 01 trying to get that attention in the classrooms, which turned me into a jokester in the class. So I would do shit to get the attention of the crowd from the class and became like this class clown dude and I would get in trouble and shit. And then it translated from that into, you know, me breakdancing and doing all of this hip hop shit. Because I loved hip hop and I was starting to see what what was being created as a movement and what was being generated as an interest that was taken over. Like it didn't matter what else was cool at the time when hip hop started to really become that shit.
38:19 Speaker 01 There was nothing more important than knowing how to do something that was a representation of hip hop. If you was a graffiti artist and you was fucking dope,
38:31 Speaker 01 you became something that was like on a celebrity status level. That's when motherfuckers started putting graffiti on clothes and everybody that was involved with hip hop or some kind of representation of hip hop became some sort of celebrity. So for me, that's why I wanted to learn how to do everything in hip hop because I still didn't know what I wanted to do. The DJ shit complicated. The breakdancing shit, I ain't like the fucking bruises I was getting all the time. You know what I'm saying? And the graffiti shit, I was cool with it, but it was really when that situation happened with me and C Brown. That's now when I found that I was able to get the feeling of when I was this little boy
39:16 Speaker 01 dancing for my parents and their company. And at the same time, I was able to have that spotlight on me being the rapper guy. So it's like all of this shit became the thing that I started to grow. Not only this appreciation for it,
39:37 Speaker 01 but I started to grow addicted to the shit.
39:40 Steven Bartlett? That is what I was expecting in terms of like, I was just trying to figure out the psychological reason why you became so addicted to this because listen, I come from a background where lots of my friends started rapping and most of them fell off. And then there's like one or two of them that just became, it became like their medication to some shit. And I've always wondered why they just like that individual just stuck at it for all those years. But in that, in that answer, we have the um.
40:05 Speaker 01 I think the biggest addiction for me out of all of it was to be able to say to my father.
40:16 Speaker 01 I wanted to be able to experience the day, not knowing if it would ever come. But it was a serious, serious thing. Like I used to write this shit on my wall and just on a piece of paper and I would stick it on the wall. And it would say, one day, I'm going to get a deal. I'm gonna sign a contract. I'm gonna come home with so much fucking money. That I'm gonna be able to tell my father, I told you so. That's all I wanted to be able to do. And I wrote that shit and put it on the wall. And I would look at that shit every day.
40:57 Speaker 01 And, and there would be days still when he would tell me, I gotta come to work. And I would look at that sign.
41:06 Speaker 01 And then I would see him outside in the truck.
41:09 Speaker 01 And I walk out that fucking house and I would be mad as hell.
41:15 Speaker 01 Angry. And what I do love about my father as I got older is I understood
41:25 Speaker 01 what he wanted. He just wanted to make sure
41:32 Speaker 01 I wasn't wasting my time. He built this company. He wanted to pass it down.
41:38 Steven Bartlett? It was love.
41:39 Speaker 01 It's love. It was, he need his son to succeed.
41:45 Speaker 01 I'm his pride and his joy. And
41:50 Speaker 01 failure is not an option with my father.
41:52 Steven Bartlett? And I guess where he came from, you know, it's the same with my mother. My mother, when I told her eighteen, I wasn't going to university, wouldn't speak to me for years. But she comes from Nigeria. She left school at seven years old. She can't read or write today. So I was the only, of her four kids, I was the only one that says I'm not going to university. Now she stood in my way and said, don't start a business, et cetera, et cetera. But in, in my maturity, I go, she stood in my way because she loved me.
42:14 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
42:15 Steven Bartlett? At the time, and everyone goes, a lot of people go through, especially sort of immigrant, immigrant kids and stuff.
42:20 Speaker 01 Primarily.
42:21 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
42:22 Speaker 01 Because that pain and that struggle, that suffering that they come from, that shit ain't no, that's not this shit that we was raised in. That, you know, me and you, we obviously, even if you was born there, you wasn't. You didn't spend your years there to to experience the pain that they did. So you come here now, you still don't know they struggle. They know though, they never gonna forget and they obviously want the best for their babies, man. My father came to the Apollo to see us. And this what made him even more sure about disrespecting me. And disrespecting the rap shit, me and my my crew. Leaders of the new school, we had an opportunity to perform at the Apollo at amateur night at the Apollo.
43:08 Speaker 01 And we get up there and we got booed. Badly booed. One of the first times, you know, when me and Charlie Brown decided to form the group, the guy Mystery that was with us originally. He got tired of the the the weight, there was no real light at the end of the tunnel if we was gonna get an opportunity to get a record deal. He was selling drugs in the street too, he decided he wanted to go back to the street and do that, he ain't wanna be in a rap group no more, that's how. Room was made for Dinko to get in the group. Cause we still felt like we needed to replace the third rapper. And we got our three rap dudes now, it's me, Brown and Dinko, and then I said, yo, we need a DJ, let me get my cousin. So Malo came. And we ended up doing the show at the Apollo.
43:50 Speaker 01 Got booed and my father was even, he was hitting me with the I told you so that night. See, I tell you, yo, you know, waste your time with this little idiot rapper boy shit.
44:02 Speaker 01 For come on work, that's what I'm gonna tell you for come to work, so you can learn some stability. And stop waste your time with this rapper shit. It's like he talking to me and we still in the venue.
44:13 Steven Bartlett? Really?
44:13 Speaker 01 We ain't even leave, he just beating me in the head with this. Total disrespect. But.
44:23 Speaker 01 Again, at that time, I I hated him for it.
44:28 Speaker 01 As we got older and I I I that day came for me. I got my my record deal when I was seventeen and.
44:37 Steven Bartlett? What was it about you, though? Was it the unique style? And you had a completely different flow that people were just drawn to, that raised the energy on every record you touched?
44:49 Speaker 01 It definitely was that. And that came completely from dancehall influence. Right? So are you familiar with like Sting?
45:00 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
45:01 Speaker 01 All right, so Sting clashes that used to happen from the eighties all the way down. The one thing that I saw in dancehall culture that I wasn't seeing in hip hop was the way when dancehall artists was getting busy and clashing in front of ten, fifteen thousand dollars, thousand people in that Sting audience. The energy that they had to have to make sure that they're portraying themselves in a way
45:33 Speaker 01 that was just more than the lyrics. It was a complete showmanship that was a collective of things. It was the outfit. It was the jumping around. It was the kicking of foot. It was the flinging of your hand and the way you was coming through on the microphone and the flow patterns and the cleverness of the lyrics and the punchlines. It was all of these things. And it was mind blowing to me because I wasn't seeing that same thing in hip hop. In hip hop, you see a dude just walking around. You know, they might hold their crutch and they act like they too cool to be that animated. Me, I love that shit. I love Kung Fu movies.
46:18 Speaker 01 I love karate movies. So all of that shit.
46:23 Speaker 01 And the dancing up and the dissing and that and the foot this, that. I just took all of that shit. And I said, I'm gonna turn this into what I'm gonna do on these stages. And I think that.
46:37 Speaker 01 If I mastered this shit and I could master my breathing, and I don't exhaust myself too soon, try to jump around all over the fucking stage going crazy, I think I might become a dangerous motherfucker that's hard to compete with because
46:55 Speaker 01 dudes are not moving like this on no stage. I'm going to all of the shows. I'm being a student. I'm in the clubs. I'm in the street. I'm everywhere just to see and learn and pull inspiration from somewhere. And I pulled a lot of inspiration from different places, but that was when I found it. Like, looking at those Clash, Sting clashes and Jammies and Killam and Jarro, like, all them man from Saxon and all of that that was out there, Tipper, Iri and all of them man, like, them dudes raised me.
47:33 Steven Bartlett? It's so interesting because what you've described there is kind of like my understanding of what creativity is, where you pull from so many different, almost clouds of inspiration to create a new one.
47:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
47:44 Steven Bartlett? And I was thinking about, I was thinking about your kids. You said to me before we started recording, you've got six kids and they're around like twenty, thirty years old now.
47:50 Speaker 01 Right.
47:52 Steven Bartlett? Based on what you now understand about what made you stand out different, that what it took in terms of your mentality, you used the word student there. If one of those kids comes to you now and says, "Dad, what are the fundamentals that I can take from your journey up until that point at, say, twenty-one years old, that would increase my chance of success no matter the industry?" What are those fundamentals?
48:17 Speaker 01 So, the fundamentals that I would give my kids, which I've already feel like I've been given to them, is the first thing is identify with what you love. And once you love it, hone in on that thing until you can master it to the point where
48:41 Speaker 01 people can identify that there's no questioning your love for it. That's the first thing.
48:50 Speaker 01 Once you love it to the point where...
48:55 Speaker 01 Your actions speak louder than anything you could say about how much you love it. That is always the root of whatever success is preordained or destined to come to you. No matter what it is that you choose to do.
49:14 Speaker 01 Because
49:16 Speaker 01 what is actually gonna create the revenue is that you're not doing it from a place of trying to generate the revenue.
49:27 Speaker 01 You're gonna do this shit regardless. So it's not about the money for you. You're fulfilling something. In your soul, in your body, there's a feeling that even the money can't give you. There's people that have this money and they still can't find that feeling, man. And there's nothing like it.
49:52 Speaker 01 This is a feeling that really exists, bro. That can actually make you the happiest person in the world.
50:02 Speaker 01 That happens to be my music. Because and and my children understand now.
50:13 Speaker 01 I love my children so much and I love my family so much. I'm not playing with anything that I know is gonna allow me the opportunity to make sure that I can show them and I can take care of them. And I can, without compromise, find a way and a means to securing of the well being of my family. And I found something that I love that has provided me those means and the ability to do it. And I don't have to question how I'm going to get to that. On no day, I could be sick, I could be
50:58 Speaker 01 I could be sick and in the hospital and write a song.
51:05 Speaker 01 And even if I'm too weak to say it,
51:08 Speaker 01 I could give it to somebody
51:11 Speaker 01 and work out whatever business I need to work out with that person so they still do that same song. God willing, the success of that song that
51:21 Speaker 01 hopefully is garnished, reaches a level of success based on this creation from a feeling that I was inspired by or from a feeling that I got that I can't explain and I can't give to nobody other than through this music.
51:37 Speaker 01 That will take care of not just my family, but it actually might take care of filling a space in the millions of people's lives that will hear this shit. That at some point, depending on the impact of the song, they fuck around and see you 20 years from now and become the fucking CEO of Google and will tell you, "I am a fan. I loved you." What this fucking song did to, for me, when I was 10, now I'm 30. And at this moment, when I was 10, I remember wearing this little t-shirt with a yellow fucking balloon face on it. And I had my little bicycle outside.
52:20 Speaker 01 And my mother let me play with my two friends two houses down. We played this fucking song 10 times in a row
52:29 Speaker 01 until we had to go inside. And that song changed my life and it gave me the motivation to wanna do this thing, evolve into this person, think a new way that allowed me to pursue something that I found that I love. And now, I'm a fucking 200 million dollar CEO in Google. I'm a fan of your shit, you're still doing what I love, and I wanna sit down with you and figure out something magical that we could do together.
52:57 Steven Bartlett? Sounds addictive.
52:58 Speaker 01 That's very fucking addictive. Fuck that. That's the most addictive shit in the world to me. Because it's like, that's, that's greater than man. You can't teach somebody how to do that. That's not a book science, that's not school. You know what I'm saying? That shit is, you identify with this gift.
53:21 Speaker 01 We all got the gift. There's something that we've all been blessed with. At some point, if we listen to that fucking little thing that speaks to us inside. Some people call it instinct, some people call it a vibe, some people call it an energy. Whatever the fuck you call it, some people call it a voice. Whatever that thing is, bro. If it sparks the thought
53:49 Speaker 01 that changes the whole trajectory
53:53 Speaker 01 to what your life can evolve into because you took a second to listen to that shit.
54:00 Speaker 01 You are identifying with your blessing, you are identifying with your gift. And at that point, you learn what the fuck it is and become one with it and walk in your purpose, bro. So you might instill this thing into the lives of so many people that you live forever through this thing that you've created. That's not a man thing no more. That shit is deeper than man. I am absolutely addicted to that because when you really think about it, that shit is something, that's, that's godly.
54:42 Speaker 01 It's weird to me when people find it strange when we call ourselves gods and earth, right? Because I'm saying.
54:52 Speaker 01 What do you want me to be? You want me to be other than God? Anything other than its original form is the worst state of its own existence. Because you're not even functioning within the nature that you was created to function in. So
55:10 Speaker 01 you can't make me call myself devil-like because you think that it's a blasphemous act for me to say that I'm godly, or I'm godlike, or I'm made in the likeness of the Most High. That mentality is why I function this way. Because I refuse to think that there is nothing that I can't do
55:34 Speaker 01 beyond man.
55:37 Speaker 01 Beyond man. If I could sit down here and smoke a spliff and eat a bowl of cereal and fucking go yah yah yah yah yah, yah yah yah yah yah. And when I step up in the place, and when I step, yo, what steps correct? Woo-ha, I got you all in check. And the whole fucking planet is doing it. It don't matter what country I go to. And then I get to Sweden and they telling me yah yah yahs, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I ain't from Sweden, I don't know that. I just was vibing and bugging out, the weed had me and feeling away. Nice little spliff, little food, little bowl of cereal, and I just was joking in the crib and yah yah yah yah yah. Motherfuckers was laughing in my house. I thought it was funny. I did this shit on the record. I like funny.
56:22 Speaker 01 But I also like serious. There's always a balance between the guys that we found the most entertainment from. All of the dudes that was on TV that we liked, that was the fucking criminals, they was always funny, right? Al Pacino in Scarface, he was a serious motherfucker, but he was funny. Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, serious but funny. Right? We in the hood, we love the balance between serious and funny.
56:48 Speaker 01 I try to incorporate serious and funny in all of my shit.
56:52 Speaker 01 Bottom line is, my children, the fundamentals I want to give you all. Find it, love it, identify with what you love, become one with that thing. Pursue it to the point where you become so engulfed in it, you don't know nothing else other than that. Walk in your purpose is what it evolves into.
57:12 Steven Bartlett? What kind of human beings do they need to be? Character traits?
57:16 Speaker 01 Alright, this is what it needs to be.
57:21 Speaker 01 Some of it might sound fucked up.
57:24 Speaker 01 First thing is you gotta be selfish as hell.
57:29 Speaker 01 You gotta be selfish. I don't give a fuck. It's, it's, it's, it's the, it's the sacrifice, but without great sacrifice and without great risk, there is no such thing as great reward. Can't have one. There's, that doesn't, there's no, that math will never math.
57:48 Speaker 01 You know what I'm saying? You have to have, and I don't like this word, but I'm gonna say it because it's true. You have to be a little man- maniacal with this shit. Maniac, right? That word isn't good in a lot of situations, but when you're pursuing your destiny, when you identify with your destiny, you have to be selfish. You have to be maniacal. You have to be uncompromising.
58:18 Speaker 01 And you have to move in a way, when it comes to those three things, when you function completely in a way where it's an unwavering faith. Like, it don't matter how fucked up that shit might look. It don't matter how much it feel like it ain't gonna work.
58:37 Steven Bartlett? Delusional.
58:39 Speaker 01 Complete delusion.
58:42 Speaker 01 You gotta believe the delusion. Because it's only delusional until it works.
58:50 Speaker 01 So is it really delusional?
58:54 Speaker 01 A motherfucker only gonna call it delusion until it don't work for nobody else to see, but for the whole world to see. And then once the world see it, there's nothing delusional about it. Now, your delusion becomes, oh, he was a fucking genius. We didn't see it when he saw it. We didn't understand it when he did. We thought this motherfucker was crazy. But he definitely always, he always figured this thing was the thing to do and he's, he's stuck by that shit.
59:27 Steven Bartlett? When you say selfish, obviously that word has got a lot of different connotations and meanings and, but I heard from it that the selfishness is focusing on serving yourself and your dreams and your mission.
59:40 Steven Bartlett? Like you were somewhat selfish when you said, I want to be a rapper, even though your father's saying, I want you to come and be an electrical contractor. That was selfish of you to say, no, I want to take care of me first.
59:52 Speaker 01 That's selfish. I'm meaning even more extreme than that.
59:58 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:00:00 Speaker 01 Selfish to my father because, in a way, I don't want to, I don't want to look at it as was selfish to him. I was just on some, I don't want to do what you want to do. That's not really being selfish. That's just having a difference in opinion, right? Selfish, when I say selfish, it means my children, right? I've had to miss moments that were never going to get back. I missed my oldest son's high school graduation.
1:00:30 Speaker 01 I missed
1:00:33 Speaker 01 one of my daughter's college graduations.
1:00:36 Speaker 01 I've missed
1:00:39 Speaker 01 times when I should have been there to teach
1:00:44 Speaker 01 my child how to drive, or I should have been there to teach my child how to ride a bike. I missed a lot of that, right?
1:00:54 Speaker 01 And
1:00:57 Speaker 01 a lot of it had to do with
1:01:01 Speaker 01 circumstance. And my circumstance, which I obviously contributed to creating for myself, I had to take responsibility for these choices that I made and these circumstances that I created for myself. And the, the situation that became a real life situation for me, left me very few choices. So there was a choice where I could be there for everything and then the money ain't where it need to be. Or
1:01:37 Speaker 01 I'm going to do what I love, not just because I love it and it brings me joy and it brings me peace of mind. Because I would go to the studio
1:01:50 Speaker 01 and when I'm in that studio and I close the door and then I'm in those four walls.
1:01:58 Speaker 01 I don't have to argue with the child's mother.
1:02:02 Speaker 01 I don't have to argue with my woman. I don't get talk back from people that choose to have a debate about shit that ain't even worth debating about. All of the unnecessary distractions, I can leave outside of that room. And when I'm in that room, I am fulfilling my destiny. I am fulfilling my soul and I'm making myself get to a place mentally where my peace of mind is so where it needs to be that not only am I allowed to become, feel, think and evolve into whatever place my mind takes me.
1:02:48 Speaker 01 I'm then able to get to that place emotionally, spiritually, mentally. Create something, put it in a song. Change the effect that I can have as an impact through this thing that I'm blessed with as a gift. And then I could come down off of that and be in a happier place. So that when I do get back around the people that I gotta argue with, I'm in a better place to deal with them.
1:03:18 Steven Bartlett? Is there sort of guilt associated with that as you've sort of matured and understood and, you know, had time to reflect on missing those key moments? I worry about this a lot because I'm a workaholic and I think my work is in many respects some kind of psychological escape. Um, and I'm concerned that when I do have a kid, I've got a partner, been together four years, I'm thirty one now, that I might use my work as an excuse to not be there or I might not make the necessary adjustment to realize that I only get one bike ride moment.
1:03:55 Steven Bartlett? So.
1:03:55 Speaker 01 I'm gonna tell you something.
1:04:02 Speaker 01 There is no right way and no wrong way when it comes to making that decision. Other than what you know in your heart. I definitely live with guilt. I feel like there was things that I could have done without
1:04:20 Speaker 01 to be there for my children.
1:04:23 Speaker 01 But I also feel like that's me saying that now, right?
1:04:31 Speaker 01 I'm in a different place now in my life than I was at that time. And at that time,
1:04:38 Speaker 01 the mentality that I have now didn't exist then, right? And the mentality that needed to exist then for me to get to this mentality now was important. And it was a part of the needed components to exist in my journey for me to be able to have this conversation now, this mentality now. Was that survival? It definitely was survival. When you're dealing with four mothers, all having you in court systems, all getting significant amount of money for child support,
1:05:16 Speaker 01 all not in the best place relationship wise with you.
1:05:21 Speaker 01 Sometimes business is up, sometimes business is down. You have to be able to be swift and changeable regardless of the circumstances in order to stay remaindable. Because no matter if business is up or business is down, the courts don't care.
1:05:41 Speaker 01 The child support that needs to come every month, the mothers need to see it because they don't care. When your kids need what they need, they don't care. Because they didn't ask for this.
1:05:57 Speaker 01 You can't create an excuse. That's how I was raised. Your kid didn't ask to be put in a situation that you cannot do what you're supposed to do for them. So that's not their problem. You have to find a solution.
1:06:14 Steven Bartlett? It's a lot of pressure.
1:06:15 Speaker 01 It's a lot. It's a lot. But I also feel like when you identify with your gift,
1:06:25 Speaker 01 that's part of the gift. That's what makes it the gift. Because the most high usually don't give us more than we can handle. You know, and with that being said,
1:06:36 Speaker 01 all of these things we talking about, which is one of the best questions that I love that you asked, right? What would I give my kids? And I keep coming back to that because I want my kids to understand
1:06:50 Speaker 01 that focus on what you love is most primary. Being selfish, and when I say selfish, not just my kids, but even my woman. There might be a lot of shit she want to do. Sorry.
1:07:03 Speaker 01 I can't do it right now. I can't do it right now. I could do it later. And then there's moments when you can do it and you make the time and you do it. You know, but until there's another means of me being able to do what I love and find the fulfillment that I find while I'm doing what I love,
1:07:27 Speaker 01 this is also a part of who y'all fell in love with.
1:07:29 Steven Bartlett? Moments in our life, I think, help us to see things a little bit more clearly. And especially when they're really significant moments. And one of those moments that I see in your story is in 2012, where I think you're forty two years old at the time and your manager and friend Chris dies.
1:07:50 Speaker 01 Rest in peace to Chris.
1:07:53 Speaker 01 Chris was all that I knew.
1:07:56 Speaker 01 Everything, everything that I I learned after Chuck D and Hank Shockley and them, I learned it with Chris. I learned how to make my money with Chris. My tax brackets changed with Chris. My lawyers changed because Chris. My booking agents changed with Chris. My touring experiences changed with Chris. My ability to tell my mother to quit her job and never had to look back to work for nobody from nineteen ninety five to this day. All of that, I did it with Chris.
1:08:28 Steven Bartlett? That day when you find out that Chris's past.
1:08:32 Steven Bartlett? Can you take me to that day?
1:08:34 Speaker 01 That day was so fucking terrible, bro.
1:08:46 Speaker 01 His life changed when this woman came into his life.
1:08:52 Speaker 01 I'm not gonna dive too much into that part, but
1:08:57 Speaker 01 I'm definitely gonna say that Chris's life changed, not for the better, when she came around.
1:09:06 Speaker 01 So
1:09:08 Speaker 01 once that happened, it started to change the energy amongst the violated family.
1:09:16 Speaker 01 And I really wish, because I don't want this to be heard in a way where it seem like I'm shitting on the woman because I'm not shitting on the woman. I'm acknowledging the reality of the situation. As you can see, I'm not saying nothing bad about the woman. I'm just talking about, I'm I'm acknowledging a time period where a change transpired in a significant way and it happened after this woman came around. That's it.
1:09:47 Speaker 01 Long story short, I think his daughter was was coming home from college and he he had to go and meet her at Grand Central Station in Manhattan.
1:10:03 Speaker 01 So...
1:10:07 Speaker 01 He asked me for a ride to Grand Central Station.
1:10:11 Speaker 01 And, um... I give him the lift to Grand Central Station.
1:10:18 Speaker 01 And that's the last day that I saw him.
1:10:21 Speaker 01 The next morning, I get the call
1:10:27 Speaker 01 from his assistant that something happened to him.
1:10:33 Speaker 01 And I'm asking what happened to him. And they just said he hurt himself, but they didn't say, you know, that he was dead. They just was like, he hurt himself.
1:10:48 Speaker 01 The assistant called this young lady, I forget her name, at the office. And when the young lady answered the phone, we're on the three-way.
1:11:00 Speaker 01 And she's crying and she's screaming on the phone.
1:11:05 Speaker 01 And
1:11:08 Speaker 01 she just kept saying, "Chris hurt himself, Chris hurt himself." And the assistant is asking her, "What exactly did he do to himself?"
1:11:18 Speaker 01 And she said, "She don't know. He just hurt himself." And then we asked if he was dead, and then she said she don't know.
1:11:32 Speaker 01 So when we got to Chris's home,
1:11:38 Speaker 01 we couldn't go in the house. And, uh...
1:11:43 Speaker 01 It wasn't until
1:11:50 Speaker 01 you saw the coroner van come.
1:11:55 Speaker 01 And when you saw the van,
1:11:59 Speaker 01 and then they reversed the van into the driveway to get as close to the door
1:12:06 Speaker 01 of the house. Because it was a downstairs door. And then there was the regular door to go up the stairs and you go in the house from the front. But whatever happened to him, it happened downstairs. Because that's where his body was.
1:12:24 Speaker 01 And they went inside and they, um, they brought them black bags with them. Them body bags and, uh...
1:12:36 Speaker 01 That's when it, that's when it got real. That's when it changed. Everything changed when you saw you saw the bags.
1:12:45 Speaker 01 And, uh...
1:12:50 Speaker 01 We knew, um...
1:12:56 Speaker 01 When they came out the, uh...
1:13:02 Speaker 01 When they came out the basement with the bags and his body was in the bags.
1:13:09 Speaker 01 That's when you knew Chris was never coming back.
1:13:13 Speaker 01 So, uh...
1:13:16 Speaker 01 You know, the crying started.
1:13:19 Speaker 01 And a lot of arguing started.
1:13:24 Speaker 01 A lot of threats started.
1:13:29 Speaker 01 And, uh...
1:13:32 Speaker 01 My life was going in a whole nother direction after that.
1:13:38 Speaker 01 And I didn't like it.
1:13:41 Speaker 01 Because I was confused about how to move. And I was lost for a minute.
1:13:49 Speaker 01 Because, uh...
1:13:54 Speaker 01 I never really had to manage my career without a manager. And he wasn't just a manager, he was my brother.
1:14:05 Speaker 01 So it got scary for a minute.
1:14:08 Speaker 01 I couldn't get it together, that's why I didn't put out no record for nine years.
1:14:17 Speaker 01 And um, I started to just do different type of business with signing artists and uh.
1:14:34 Speaker 01 That's when we put out OT Genesis.
1:14:38 Speaker 01 And um, we had some really good success with him.
1:14:44 Speaker 01 And um.
1:14:47 Speaker 01 Signed a few other artists, you know, this one artist by the name of Stove, Stogard Cooks and I signed. You know, another young artist by the name of Murder Moog and.
1:15:00 Speaker 01 I um, I wasn't happy though with, with just doing it like that and. I just, I didn't feel comfortable putting out music. Until I got the right support system in place and I, I couldn't get it together.
1:15:18 Steven Bartlett? When you say you couldn't get it together, what does that, what does that mean?
1:15:21 Speaker 01 That means like.
1:15:23 Steven Bartlett? Psychologically, you couldn't get it together.
1:15:24 Speaker 01 Psychologically, I couldn't get it together because I didn't feel like I had a support system that I could believe in enough. To make me feel like I am psychologically able to move with the comfort, the confidence. And the support that I know I'm gonna need. And the responsibility of trying to wear all of the hats myself, I was doing it. But I wasn't doing it at the level that Chris Lighty was able to do it.
1:15:53 Steven Bartlett? And you were grieving at the same time.
1:15:55 Speaker 01 Absolutely, because I lost my father two years after Chris.
1:16:01 Speaker 01 The two most important male figures in my life.
1:16:05 Speaker 01 Chris was gone two thousand twelve, I lost my father two thousand and fourteen.
1:16:10 Steven Bartlett? And you'd reconciled with him.
1:16:11 Speaker 01 I definitely reconciled with him before he passed. The problem is I didn't get to enjoy my time with him once we got good. So that was a horrible feeling too.
1:16:25 Speaker 01 Because it's like
1:16:28 Speaker 01 all of the time that was wasted, fucking not getting along was was stupid.
1:16:36 Speaker 01 Fucking stupid, you know what I'm saying? That's part of the reason why I started to really like get unhealthy and fucked up. I was trying everything to drown the pain and the frustration and the suffering of those losses
1:16:55 Speaker 01 by overworking, overdrinking, oversmoking weed and cigarettes.
1:17:02 Speaker 01 And it got so bad that I got to the weight of three hundred and forty pounds. I've never been that, I'm I'm not even built to be that heavy.
1:17:14 Speaker 01 It's it's funny, it's like I look back at certain pictures and I looked at how overweight I was. I look at my skin, yeah, there's certain pictures I had, I had these like marks on my face.
1:17:26 Speaker 01 I I hate those pictures, like I see the darkness in those pictures, you know?
1:17:32 Steven Bartlett? There's this book called The Body Holds the Score, but the title is just the thing that I I I've I've actually gained the most from, it just says that when there's things going on in our psychology and our mind, the body will show it.
1:17:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, man.
1:17:44 Steven Bartlett? We'll eat, we'll drink, we'll go to sleep, but you'll see it in the body before you see it in the mind. The mind is invisible, obviously.
1:17:49 Speaker 01 Right.
1:17:50 Steven Bartlett? The the body is the first place to see it, and I was reading through that phase of your life and you were on sort of breathing machines when you were sleeping and things like.
1:17:57 Speaker 01 Nah, I wasn't on a breathing machine, I had sleep apnea.
1:17:59 Steven Bartlett? Oh, yeah, sleep apnea, okay.
1:18:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had sleep apnea, I was, um.
1:18:02 Steven Bartlett? You drank yourself into a coma at one point?
1:18:05 Speaker 01 I drank myself into, not a coma, I drank myself into an inability to wake myself up.
1:18:12 Steven Bartlett? Oh, okay.
1:18:13 Speaker 01 I had to be woken up by my son and my security in L A. It took like forty five minutes and we had just come back from hanging out at a club called Pappy's. He sat me down the next day, he was like, listen.
1:18:29 Speaker 01 I don't wanna hurt your feelings cuz you my father.
1:18:35 Speaker 01 And I don't even know if I got the strength to say it to you now, but I had a conversation with the security.
1:18:42 Speaker 01 I need you to listen to them because I'm too scared to tell you how I feel. That's how bad it was.
1:18:52 Speaker 01 My son ain't never speak to me like that in my life, but I needed to hear it.
1:18:58 Speaker 01 But he couldn't even say it to me because that's how much he still was trying to protect my feelings.
1:19:08 Speaker 01 But this is the first time that I knew I really disappointed my son. All that Busta Rhymes shit was cool up until this moment when he saw this shit.
1:19:23 Speaker 01 And he's been seeing it, but this is when it hits the low. That conversation fucked me up. The next day, the doctors with the prednisone and I went to the doctor. I'm breathing so fucked up that outside of the door, the doctor was like, yo,
1:19:40 Speaker 01 why you breathing like that? And he wasn't even in the room with me. He's coming in the room. And I said, breathing like what? Because I was doing it this so for so long over the last three years that I was it was starting to sound normal to me. The doctor said, I'm sending you to the hospital cuz he stuck this shit in my throat. And when he saw how big the fucking pallops was, it blocked ninety percent of my breathing passage. He said, if he sends me home and I take a shower and the central air system is blowing and I catch a draft that can lead to me catching a cold and that last ten percent of my breathing gets blocked up because of a swollen gland from a sore throat or some shit, I can die in my sleep that night.
1:20:23 Speaker 01 He said, "I'm gotta call an ambulance for you. I'm in California. LA, he says, "I need you to go right now to UCLA Medical Center into the emergency room, and I'm gonna call the head person at the hospital to have them admit you immediately. You need to go into surgery tomorrow."
1:20:44 Speaker 01 I said, "I ain't going in no ambulance." He said, "Well, then you have to sign this document that will exemplify me. If you don't listen and something happens and you die between now and when you get to the hospital." I ain't never been spoken to like this in my life. This is when I knew this shit was crazy. My son now, I'm calling him, telling him to meet me at the hospital. We get to the hospital, and I'm in the doctor's office, and they doing all the preliminary shit before they gotta admit me into the emergency. My son is talking to me, and he tells me,
1:21:22 Speaker 01 "I thought you was gonna die last night.
1:21:28 Speaker 01 And I ain't never been this scared, Dad, but I'm scared you're gonna die. I lost Grandpa already. I can't lose you too. Can you please stop drinking? Can you please stop smoking? Can you please get back to the daddy that I know you to be?"
1:21:49 Speaker 01 Finished me.
1:21:53 Speaker 01 At that point,
1:21:56 Speaker 01 I made up my mind. I'm gonna get this surgery. When I get this surgery, I'm going to get in shape. I go home. On the way home, Dexter Jackson, bodybuilder competitor, who used to compete in the Olympia. He became
1:22:14 Speaker 01 a Mr. Olympia champ. This man pops up in my stories, driving in his car in Jacksonville, Florida, and he's spitting the vocals to put your hands where my eyes could see. And then I hit him in the DM, and I said, "Mr. Jackson, I'm a huge fan of you as a professional bodybuilder. Is there any way that we could get on the phone? I need your help."
1:22:41 Speaker 01 He hits me back, he sends me his number, I call him on the phone. I said,
1:22:48 Speaker 01 "Thanks for calling me, I salute you, Mr. Jackson. Can we please figure out a way to get me back in shape?" That man said to me, "You saw you ready, boss?" And I said, "Absolutely." He said, "You gotta come to Jacksonville, and you gotta stay here for thirty days. Tell your girl she can't come. Tell your kids you'll see them in thirty days. I need to put you through something for thirty days before we continue this journey. You survive this thirty days, I know you serious."
1:23:24 Speaker 01 I rented a motherfucking mansion for like seven bedrooms. I went and got a cameraman to document it, my meal prep chef, my masseuse, because I knew that that workout was gonna fuck me up every day, and I needed somebody to rub these muscles up. I got my recording engineer, so I didn't need to leave the house. I got an assistant.
1:23:44 Speaker 01 And that was about it. Stayed in the fucking crib for thirty days. Lost about twenty-seven pounds in thirty days. These dudes that I'm surrounded by,
1:24:00 Speaker 01 by way of my first bodybuilding competitor trainer, Victor Munoz, and my second primary trainer, the legendary Mr. Olympia himself, Dexter Jackson, I was able to get my shit together, bro.
1:24:17 Speaker 01 And once I got my health, and once I got my mind, and I got my spirit right,
1:24:25 Speaker 01 and I started to be proud of me, when I looked at me, and my kids was looking at me, and they would say shit that you could only hear once you did what you needed to do and put in the work you needed to put in, so that it shows.
1:24:43 Speaker 01 They're not gonna say it if it don't look like the way they need to see it, so they could say what they need to say.
1:24:50 Speaker 01 When that happened,
1:24:53 Speaker 01 you hearing the right shit, you feeling the right love, that shit was lifting my spirit so much. And then, I'mma tell you something.
1:25:09 Speaker 01 Going through this pandemic was another serious challenge mentally and emotionally and spiritually.
1:25:17 Speaker 01 My brothers Pharrell, Williams and Swiss Beats. And big up to Timbaland too, because all four of them is the executive producers of this new album Blockbuster.
1:25:27 Steven Bartlett? Which is out right now?
1:25:28 Speaker 01 Absolutely. The Blockbuster album is out and I'm super grateful to everybody that participated in helping this magic happen and come together.
1:25:36 Steven Bartlett? This is, this is the culmination of all of the experience and all of the life stories that we've talked about. But the thing that really stood out to me is you've made the decision to put people on this album who are young, up and coming, fresher artists who you haven't really worked with previously. And you've worked with bloody everybody. Everybody, but you chose to give these younger artists a platform for some reason.
1:25:58 Speaker 01 Two reasons. The first reason is I'm never gonna listen to the narrative of this thing where
1:26:09 Speaker 01 I would hear it
1:26:12 Speaker 01 a little more regularly than I actually choose to hear it. I actually don't ever want to hear it, but it's this bullshit about how the elder statesmen or the older MCs don't really respect what the new guys is doing. That shit is bullshit. At least
1:26:30 Speaker 01 speaking for myself and the, the type of artists that I surround myself with, we don't feel like that. We don't move like that. We encourage that shit because when we was young artists, we wanted the big dudes to put their arms around us and give us game and school us and teach us shit so we could be better. You know what I'm saying? Chuck D gave me my name. Big Daddy Kane used to let me come to his crib and ask questions. He put me on his albums. He used to help me learn, let me learn. Bring me the shows that he was performing at. Fucking, um, De La Soul, they did the same shit for us, like.
1:27:07 Speaker 01 Too many MCs gave us the guidance that made me great. I feel like it's only right that we do the same shit for the next generation of motherfuckers, especially if they dope. And I'm a fan of a lot of these new artists. And I wanna work with them because they still inspiring me to wanna go in the studio and stay razor blade sharp with my shit when I gotta do my shit. You know what I'm saying? And I see a lot of them paying homage. There's a lot of motherfuckers walking around with their hairstyles like how I used to wear it with my dreads. There's a lot of motherfuckers that dress and they throw their heavy jewelry on that do it the way I used to do it and still do it.
1:27:44 Speaker 01 I just ain't got the dreads no more, but all that other shit, we still doing it. But I just wanna make sure that they they know we're not only here to give them the answers and the mentorship and the guidance and the information so they could be that much more sharper when they're being creative or when they're sitting in the fucking corporate office negotiating a deal with their lawyers and their managers. But I also want them to know that we love them too. We're fans of what they doing. We see y'all paying homage and we want y'all to know we paying homage to y'all too.
1:28:16 Steven Bartlett? One of the things I always think is destined to own the future is when the when both the past and present come together. And I say that with all due respect because sometimes people see projects like this as you passing the torch, but what you're actually doing is sharing the flame.
1:28:30 Speaker 01 Sharing the fucking flame. You couldn't have said it better. Cause I ain't I ain't putting the flame out no time soon.
1:28:36 Steven Bartlett? Well, you're thirty three years deep and it's still you're still selling out the shows and doing the arenas and killing the game. And I I'm I'm so excited by this project because for those reasons, because you have you have two sort of generations coming together to create the future. And that's what's so exciting. And I have to say from this conversation, everything you say and understanding the man that Buster is, puts so much more meaning into the lyrics, into the album and the record.
1:29:02 Speaker 01 Thank you.
1:29:03 Steven Bartlett? So everyone needs to go check this album out right now, wherever you stream anything. Please go check it out because it's one hell of a project. And you're you know, you talked about that Google CEO who you inspired when he was ten years old. You were that person and you still are that person for me.
1:29:17 Speaker 01 Thank you, King.
1:29:17 Steven Bartlett? So it's such an honor to have to to get to spend this time with you today.
1:29:21 Speaker 01 Thank you, brother. Likewise, man, for real.
1:29:23 Steven Bartlett? I really appreciate it.
1:29:25 Speaker 01 The questions you ask. The places you went, I didn't expect it. I'm glad I wasn't prepped. I'm glad I wasn't prepped. I'm glad. You know what I'm saying? I just was given a prerequisite of how important you mean in this space, in your platform. And congratulations to the
1:29:46 Speaker 01 your evolution and your success with what you've been able to create for yourself.
1:29:49 Steven Bartlett? Thank you, brother.
1:29:50 Speaker 01 And becoming a successful businessman. I was driven and inspired by the story that I was being told about you. And I was like, oh, no, fuck that. I gotta come pull up. And I'm taking my time.
1:30:01 Steven Bartlett? I appreciate you.
1:30:01 Speaker 01 Because we're gonna do this shit properly. And I've never done an interview in thirty-three years. Never done an interview this in-depth. Number two, I ain't never sat with nobody this motherfucking long and did no interview in Europe in my life neither. So you hold a record, bro.
1:30:18 Steven Bartlett? I appreciate you, honestly. It's one of the greatest honors of me ever getting to do this is hearing that from you. So thank you so much, Buster.
1:30:24 Speaker 01 Thank you. It's an honor and a pleasure, brother. Appreciate you, King.
Previous Moment 137: Finance Isn’t Rocket Science! The 2 Simple Skills Billionaires Use Everyday: Codie Sanchez Next The Man Who Followed Elon Musk Everywhere: "Elon's Dad Abused Him, His Trans Child Disowned Him, And Here Are His Secrets For Success!" Walter Isaacson Page updated October 7, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
