The Quietus - A new rock music and pop culture website

Baker's Dozen

E3 Worldwide: Dizzee Rascal's Favourite Albums
Aaron Bishop , October 28th, 2020 11:08

As Dizzee Rascal releases his first album since 2017, he guides Aaron Bishop through the songs that shaped him and how the artists behind them resonated with him from being the only black kid playing Nirvana on the estate to smoking with Snoop Dogg.

When_disaster_strikes_1603714913_resize_460x400

Busta Rhymes - Extinction Level Event/When Disaster Strikes
The thing with Busta Rhymes is his energy and the way he cut through, the effort on the mic, and then the beats… It has to be a joint pick between both albums because I can’t pick. They’re both crazy albums. He made rap so exciting and interesting with his videos. Missy Elliott did it as well, but Busta Rhymes was a better rapper, and was doing way more complicated rhyme stuff that shouldn’t have worked commercially but did. And he had the best music videos, everything from ‘Dangerous’, ‘Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See’, ‘Gimme Some More’, fuck off. When that came out that was fucking mad. The only person who was big and super lyrical with all that energy after that was I guess Eminem, but that was afterwards. Everyone else wasn’t being crazy lyrical. Even someone like Jay Z was a serious lyrical guy on album tunes but he couldn’t put out a tune like ‘Gimme Some More’. We take it for granted. Now Logic and Eminem do massive mainstream tunes where they’re spitting crazy but not everyone was getting away with it back then with mental videos. I don’t give Busta enough credit as one of my major influences. He brought so much levels to mainstream rap. Weird, experimental, crazy shit. You knew when a Busta Rhymes video was coming it wasn’t going to be normal