In an interview on the All The Smoke Show podcast hosted by Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, Busta Rhymes recalled his time back in school with Jay-Z, saying Jay-Z was always that fly kid, from his jewelry game to clothing and academics.
“High school, you crossed Jay-Z, B.I.G., Jay-Z especially. Talk about that high school experience, all them legends in one vicinity,”
Stephen Jackson, one of the hosts, asked Busta Rhymes.
“It was two different schools. Me, Special Ed, and Chip Fu from Fikin were in a school called Tien High School in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Me, Biggie, and Jay-Z went to George Westinghouse Technical and Vocational High School, which was downtown Brooklyn.
I went to Tien after Westinghouse. I was getting in trouble when I was 12 and 11, so she decided to take me to Long Island. When I got to Long Island, that’s when I met Leaders of the New School. By the time I turned 15, my mother wanted to move to Florida. I didn’t want to go, so my mom and my pops had a divorce. My pops stayed in Brooklyn, and I moved back to my father’s crib.
When I moved back to my father’s crib, where my father lived was in the school district where Tien was. But because my father is a licensed electrical contractor, he wanted me to go to a trade school, so he ended up finding it so I could go to George Westinghouse Technical and Vocational High School because it was a trade school, and he wanted me to learn his trade. He wasn’t supportive of that rap thing.
Till later on, that led to a lot of conflicts between me and my pops. While I’m in school at Westinghouse, Big wasn’t rhyming in school, but he was trying dangerous stuff. He just wasn’t doing it in school.
Biggie was bubbling a little weed in school. Hov, we knew he was rhyming because he was already putting joints out with the Originators, and everybody was getting to their little hustle. Remember, it’s the ’80s, so it’s the crack era, so we were all getting to that, you know what I’m saying. And again, one day, me and Hov—I don’t know how it got put together, but somebody mentioned a battle on some speed rap. I was already practicing it a little bit in the crib, but I wasn’t really ready to display it. But again, I wasn’t concerned with none of that.
I was just with whatever smoke. So me and Hov, we go do our battle thing, and I took the L. That day, that moment turned me into the motherfucker that nobody don’t want it with now. But Hov was always just a fly kid in school, like from the jewelry game to the clothes—he was always fly. He was always smart, passed his classes. He wasn’t fuckin’ around, you know, and he got to the bread even though he was on his job with his school. But I ended up dropping out of school.”
Jay-Z has often spoken about his life growing up and all the struggles and hardships he encountered in interviews and other mediums, including in his songs.
Recalling the prevalence of drugs, harmful substances, and other violent acts in his environment growing up. Being a child who grew up with his mum after their father left them, it made it even harder for him, which is one of the factors that pushed him to the streets before he developed his talent. With the support of his mother, he built a life for himself through his music and business to where he is today.
Some of his childhood friends, like DeHaven, have equally revealed in several interviews the kind of gangster life he and Jay-Z lived growing up. He at one point took a bullet for Jay-Z as a result of one of his street dealings.
He equally revealed how much his mum feared for his life and always begged him to look after himself, getting beaten by elderly gangster members just because of Jay-Z.
Though he’s expressed his discontentment with the distance Jay-Z gave him after making it big, ignoring him, what they’d been through together, and their struggles.
