Busta Rhymes - Gimme Some More

If I aint gonna be a part of the greatest, I gotta be the greatest myself.

Album: Extinction Level Event [3rd album]
Recorded: New York
Genre: Hip Hop, East Coast Hip Hop
Album Release: December 15th 1998
Single Release: October 26th 1998 [2nd single]
Length: 2:38
Producer: DJ Scratch
Vocalist: Busta Rhymes [age 26]
Label: Flipmode Entertainment & Elektra Records

Music Video

Charts, Streams & Sales

UK (singles): #5 [x1 silver]
Spotify: 73,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 34,000,000 +
Grammy Awards 2000 Nominee: Best Rap Solo Performance [losing to Eminem]

Credits

Samples the theme from Psycho (1960)

Details

• In the late-nineties it felt like everyone was scared of the world ending. The millennium was in its last years and religious nuts took to the streets warning of the coming revelations. The news media couldn't stop talking about the millennium bug, Y2K, and disaster films like 'Armageddon' and 'Deep Impact' were becoming the norm. Hip hop was no different, but it did the apocalypse with its own spin.
  
  'Extinction Level Event' starts with a father telling his daughter, in painstaking detail, how the world will end, only for her to surprise him by thinking it sounds cool. The album laughed in the face of the fearmongers while retaining the aesthetic of incoming disaster. Songs like 'Tear Da Roof Off' started with "after the ultimate world blast that ended all things", before launching into bouncy rap music that would capture your attention even if you had ADHD. It was refreshing, while also feeling true to the times, and sums up Busta Rhymes as a rapper.
  
  Busta doesn't take himself too seriously. His music videos are fun, creative and full of vibrant colours, while his contemporaries, such as Mobb Deep, made straight-faced efforts shot in muted greys. His performances are escaped mental patient levels of energetic, seeing him bounce around as if he's attached to an invisible pogo stick.
  
  The strings from the Psycho sample on 'Gimme Some More' are both hypnotic and unsettling. The rapping sounds like a mad man talking to himself: half genius, half insane rambling. However, what really made it special was the delivery. It's a breathless, surreal escape into a larger than life, Saturday morning cartoon rap world that balanced out the never-ending dirge of the doom merchants with humour and good vibes.
  
  
• The music video is directed by Hype Williams.
  
• Busta Rhymes is a member of the Five Percent Nation.

Artwork