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Anarchy
09/05/2000 7:56 PM, Yahoo! Music
Dan Leroy
An aspiring actor, fashion designer and all-around renaissance man, it's taken Busta Rhymes more than two years to follow up the wildly inconsistent E.L.E. Guess what--he's done it again, with a sprawling 22-track effort that's as hit-or-miss as a Shaq free throw. Like the big fella, Busta's great with kids. The first single, "Get Out!!", and "Salute Da Gods!!" have a childlike exuberance and simple, infectious hooks that favorably recall Rhymes's signature hit, "Woo-Hah!!" But he tosses up air balls on several cuts, including the oddly subdued title track, which is about as far from anarchy as you can get. Even the big-name collaborations end up a 50/50 proposition-- "Make Noise," which features Lenny Kravitz on guitar, is mostly just noisy, but a dream team pairing with Jay-Z and DMX, "Why We Die," lives up to expectations, as all three MCs go for the jugular with poignant and powerful rhymes.
Give Busta points for experimentation, as the hypnotically repetitive "Fire" and vaguely dancehall-ish "We Comin' Through" use unusual beats and structures that manage to interest, instead of annoy. And give him credit for some amount of introspection on cuts like "How We Grew," although there's far more discussion of "faggots" and the like here. You'd be left with a pretty impressive effort if you dropped the 10 or so duds here--too bad Busta didn't.
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