Busta Rhymes has taken to his latest interview to discuss the makings and anticipation built behind his collaborative piece ‘Calm Down’ featuring Eminem. Busta says when he finished up his verse on the Scoop Deville produced track he knew Em would be the perfect fit on the piece!

Adriela Batista

Busta Rhymes recalls falling in love with the beat, laying down 2 16 bar verses and wanting to get a hold of Em, so he could get on the record.

“I called my manager, Chris Lighty, and I asked him to set up a meeting with Paul Rosenberg, Eminem’s manager. This was actually one of the last meetings I had with Chris before he passed away. We left the song with Paul Rosenberg but we didn’t actually get any feedback about whether [Eminem] was going to jump on it.”

“About six weeks passed by, my partner Shaheem Reid reached out to Riggs Morales, who was an A&R at Shady Records at the time,” he went on. “He came by the studio to hear the song, and two weeks later, we finally got a confirmation from Paul that Em had got the beat and that he’s fucking with it. A few months passed by, and I got a call from Paul. He wanted to meet me in the studio. He came and played Em’s verse, and I was blown away. What was interesting to me though was that Em did a 42 bar verse. Because we’re known for pretty much fucking everybody up when we get on records with other artists, it became a competitive process…I went back and I wrote 50 bars. We then scheduled a mix session for the song and when I got to Detroit, he listened to my verse, heard that it was 50 bars, he went back and turned his 42 bars into a 60 bar verse. At that point I went back and turned my 50 bar verse into a 62 bar verse. And then Em made his verse a 64 bar verse. It started off from just doing a dope, high energy hip-hop record into us respectfully competing and damn near battling each other.”