Now here's a lesson for you; if you're ever making a music video and your bodyguard gets mysteriously shot dead, help the police – otherwise they'll stop you making a rubbish-sounding film in New York a year later, as Busta Rhymes is learning.
Thanks to the stonewalling that Busta Rhymes gave the NYPD after the fatal shooting of his bodyguard in 2006 – plus the fact that Busta Rhymes can't go five minutes without someone claiming that he duffed them up with his fists and feet – the NYPD appears to be out to get the rapper. This manifested itself this weekend when Busta Rhymes was banned by police from the set of his own movie Order Of Redemption over 'public safety concerns'. We're taking this to mean one of the following: a) the NYPD is genuinely worried that Busta Rhymes will endanger public safety, b) the NYPD is exacting a petty revenge for Busta Rhymes not speaking to them about the bodyguard thing or c) the NYPD has seen the 2000 remake of Shaft and realised that if Busta Rhymes makes another film, thousands on people would probably set themselves on fire and run screaming into the streets.
It's C, isn't it?
Busta Rhymes has steadily built up a reputation as the clown prince of hip-hop over the years, although over the last year or so Busta Rhymes has tried to alter the public perception of him into something more like the clown prince of going berserk and beating up whoever happens to be standing the closest to him. Most recently this was Busta Rhymes' driver, who claims he was beaten up just because he asked for some overdue wages so he could afford a Christmas for his family. And if that wasn't comically Dickensian enough, Busta Rhymes also apparently attacked a fan for committing the serious crime of asking him for an autograph, as well as getting arrested for assault because he hit a man who spat at his car. Which might have had a machete in it.
More seriously, though, Busta Rhymes put himself in the NYPD's bad books by not cooperating about the investigation into the fatal shooting of his bodyguard Israel Ramirez at a video-shoot last year. And now it seems that if Busta Rhymes won't play ball with the NYPD, the NYPD won't play ball with Busta Rhymes, and has banned the rapper from the set of his new movie Order Of Redemption, as BBC News reports:
The movie, Order of Redemption, has started filming in New York without Rhymes, who has had several recent run-ins with the law. The Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting said producers agreed his absence after "the Police Department raised public safety concerns"… Its director Jeff Celentano said: "This is tremendously unfair to Busta, who has been nothing but professional during this project. This is a bigger loss for the city of New York." The New York Times reported that producers were unable to meet the cost of extra officers that police said were necessary due to Rhymes' "celebrity status".
This could seem to some like petty revenge on the part of the NYPD, but we're certainly hoping that it doesn't wreck the production of Order Of Redemption. We're absolutely going to stand by the film – which features stars from hits like The Rugrats Movie, D-Tox and Love Monkey and is directed by the genius who made Dickwad – and we'll be sure to enjoy watching Busta Rhymes in it when it invariably turns up unannounced on Channel Five at 2am on a Tuesday in 2011.
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Ro-Ler says
Check IMDb… Busta has been in loads of films. None of them were even halfway decent. FLIPMODE