LOS ANGELES, CA –
Achievement Award at the 2023 BET Awards — and he took the opportunity to impart some OG wisdom on the rap game during his rousing acceptance speech.
Taking the stage to rapturous applause and a standing ovation inside Los Angeles’ Microsoft Theater on Sunday night (June 25), the 51-year-old rap legend reflected on his trailblazing career while calling for more unity and positivity in Hip Hop.
Busta’s powerful speech began on an emotional note as he became overwhelmed with the love and adoration from inside the room. “I’ma wear it on my sleeve: I do want to cry,” he said before removing his sunglasses and wiping the tears from his eyes, prompting more cheers of support from the audience.
From there, the Brooklyn, New York native looked back on his remarkable yet at times turbulent journey to stardom, admitting he was “scared” when his former group, Leaders of the New School, broke up in the mid ’90s, which left a young Busta with a mouth to feed and an uncertain path ahead of him.
“I ain’t never wanted to be a solo MC,” he revealed. “I ain’t like the responsibility of making a full song. I’m good with getting to the 16 bars and busting everybody’s ass and getting up out of there.”
Undeterred by his fear, Busta shrewdly snuck his way into New York City recording studios where artists he admired were working and came carrying a secret weapon that he knew would make them let him stick around: weed.
“I made sure that when my weed was moving around in that studio, I would quickly whip up a 16-bar verse before the weed came back to me,” he recalled. “And I was able to do that quick enough for them dudes to want to hear my verse. When they asked me what was I doing, I said, ‘Let me go in the booth and do it. I ain’t telling you my rhyme until you let me in the booth
“I’d go in the booth and I’d spit, and come out the booth; they couldn’t hear the song without the ‘rah rah’ no more. I did that three, four times a week … By default, I pioneered the feature.”
