This came out in 1999 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
He may have borrowed the title from Deep Impact, but make no mistake — Busta Rhymes is definitely talking about Armageddon here. And according to him, the end is nearer than you think. As he outlines in the intro to this third solo CD, in 2000 we can expect “cataclysmic apocalypse … massive earthquakes … plagues and viruses with no known cause or cure,” and even “bloodthirsty renegade robots.” Yikes!
But that suits Busta just fine. Along with being his doomsday prophecy, the vastly overtitled E.L.E. – Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front is Rhymes’ scheme and manifesto for bringing his Flipmode Squad and followers together to produce a utopian society from the ashes of the old.
A little hifalutin’ for a rap album, you say? Well, maybe it is. But Busta delivers more than bluster on this 70-minute opus; along with talking — and rapping — a good game, he makes sure his musical ambitions keep pace with his whacked-out conspiracy theories.
From the opening salvo of Everybody Rise to the closing notes of the fittingly funereal Burial Song, much of ELE could be a rap blueprint for the new millennium; dark, futuristic tracks laced with creepy keyboards, video-game sound effects and samples that range from exotica to Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho score. Even when Busta shoots a brick — is there a law that every rap album has to have a quota of sex-booty gangster boogies and sophomoric skits? — it’s not so much a disappointment as an intermission. And his reworked version of Iron Man, featuring Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, is enough to make you forgive his sins.
Ultimately, of course, the real Iron Man here is unflagging motormouth Rhymes, who energetically rides above the tracks and spurs his cohorts like a horseman of the Apocalypse, spewing, yelling, grunting and groaning his unmistakable brand of brainy braggadocio.
Thanks to that, Busta’s verbal ELE definitely makes a deep impact.
