Okayplayer spoke to the emcee about his friendship with the late singer-songwriter.
Photo by Steve Eichner/Getty Images. Photo illustration by Okayplayer.
D’Angelo meant a lot to Busta Rhymes. The loss of the acclaimed soul innovator has left a void in music that can’t be replaced, but as a former friend, Rhymes is elevating the legacy of the man he calls a “godsend,” through music. Busta has released a tribute song called “Magic” that features the emcee rhyming over D’Angelo’s classic “One Mo‘Gin.” In a conversation with Okayplayer, Busta shared what his friendship with D’Angelo means to him and why he needed to honor his comrade.
“I met D’Angelo through Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed [Muhammad] at an A Tribe Called Quest studio session probably around 1990,” Busta shares. “It wasn’t too far from around the timeframe that we were working on ‘Scenario.’” Busta recalls the positive energy from the young artist, and how he immediately felt a kinship.
“When I met him, it was just a good, beautiful energy with the bro,” he explains. “D’Angelo’s personality speaks volumes because of how reserved he was. When it was time for him to actually speak–when you heard him sing or play the keyboard — it magnified the polar opposite of how quiet he was.”
“He was in the room, chillin’ with us. We was just talking and shooting the s**t,” Busta says of that first session with the talented kid out of Virginia. “He actually looked like a hustler from the five boroughs! [He looked the way we looked — when you in the street: a cool brother with a soft leather on and some denim jeans and Timbs and shit. He had his cornrows neat. If he had the toast on ‘em, it wouldn’t be a surprise! But he was calm. He was a man of few words. His embrace was welcoming, it was warm. He was already appreciative of what we was already doin’.”
D’Angelo entered into the circle through Q-Tip and Ali, who showed their associates what he could do, and from the beginning, his talent elevated everyone around him.
“In that same studio session, Q-Tip asked him to play some keys on the Rhodes keyboard to give us a little taste of what he do,” says Busta. “When he did that sh*t it kinda f**ked everybody’s head up. At the time, there wasn’t anybody in our crew who was playing instruments. When he was doing that shit live on the spot… it was like ‘Wow!’ This was some sh*t we wasn’t used to. For him to have been so young – because he was younger than us. I always felt like the baby in the clique – and he was younger than me.”
D’Angelo died on Oct. 14 after a private battle with pancreatic cancer. Busta Rhymes wanted to pay homage to his friend in a way that spoke to the bond they shared over the years.
“The entire 34 years of knowing D has been an incredible experience,” he shares. “That was my friend for 34 years. Acknowledging him as a friend first, as a genius second, and as one of the most significant contributors to this culture. I feel like the Earth shifted when D came to do music. He was the embodiment of some sh*t that was a complete balance of what our ancestors created, to where he took it. There’s nothing under the sun that hasn’t already been done. But it’s a whole other thing to make it your own and combine what has already been done with what hasn’t been done yet. There have been a lot of soulful artists who played and sang that came before him and came after him. But the impact was nowhere near the level that he was able to do it on just three albums across 34 years. Even before his first album came out. Just watching him when I was around Tribe.”
D’Angelo’s legacy is infinite, which is why Busta makes a point to speak of his friend in the present tense. And he acknowledges that the artist left a lot of unreleased music in his vault, but Busta Rhymes knows that even if we don’t get to hear those lost gems, his art will continue to reach generations.
“The sh*t that he did decide to share with us — when people discover it, now or years from now, [it] is going to still shift the way of thinking,” he says. “For whoever can appreciate real music. People think that it ends because of his physical transition, but it needed to be made clear that there’s nothing about him that’s going to end anytime soon.”