Busta Rhymes: “It started to really feel like we battling each other.”
The Busta Rhymes and Eminem collaboration “Calm Down,” which was released this week, is a “longtime coming,” according to Bus.
“It’s finally here,” he says in an interview with Los Angeles radio station Power 106’s Rikki Martinez. “This is for Extinction Level Event 2…[We’re] going toe-to-toe and respectfully competing and just bringing the best out of each other. I ain’t gonna lie. The process that we took to make this record is a story to tell.”
Busta says the two emcees redid several elements of the track.
“We just kept going back and forth, just competitive,” he says. “It started to really feel like we battling each other. It started to feel like a three minute and eight second song. After we kept sending it back and forth, it ended up being six minutes. We was like, ‘Yo, listen, it’s one thing to say ‘F the rules, but it’s another thing to say we O.D.in’.’ But it’s a beautiful piece of art…You’re probably never gonna experience a moment like this before. It’s our first time going in this crazy on a record unlike we’ve ever done on our own records before and probably unlike what we’ll do on any other record again. It’s special.”
