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Busta Rhymes hit the NYC premiere of “Venom: The Last Dance” on Monday, where he spoke to “Extra’s” Mona Kosar Abdi about his health journey, the movie, and the Sean “Diddy” Combs case.
Busta opened up about focusing on his fitness and how his children motivated him to make changes.
He shared, “It’s called busting your ass, being consistent in that gym, and being even more consistent with the diet — and I don’t even like calling it diet. I prefer calling it lifestyle changes… You got to make some serious lifestyle changes, and for me, you know, I think the most important thing is being the cool guy and the hero to my children and being happy as hell and being healthy as hell… It’s a work in progress and it’s still a work in progress, but it got to the point where I started to not look as cool to my kids and I started to hear about it. I didn’t like how that felt. I love the honesty of my children, though, ’cause it actually did a lot to motivate me to want to save myself and be here for my family.”
When Mona mentioned that Tom Hardy was inspired by Busta’s voice for his take on Batman villain Bane, Busta commented, “That kind of planted the seed to us actually connecting with each other. Always been a huge fan of Tom from ‘The Drop’ movie to ‘Legend’ to ‘Bronson,’ like, he’s just one of the most phenomenal actors in the world to me, personally.”
He added, “Once we got an opportunity to speak to each other, the organic nature of just how the relationship evolved, he’s like a brother to me now and a friend, and we get on the phone, we have real talk, we be on the phone sometime for hours because, I mean, he knows my personal desire to want to, you know, be a prominent presence in the film and television space.”
“It also led to an incredible opportunity for us to do a commercial for the promotion of the ‘Venom,’ movie and that went incredibly well,” Busta went on, “and then it led to a lot of dope ideas of things that we’re going to be doing together.”
On a more serious note, Busta spoke about Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is currently behind bars awaiting trial after pleading not guilty to charges of racketeering, conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution.
Busta insisted that it’s “not a hip-hop” situation and stressed the importance of reserving his opinions until the truth is undisputed.
He commented, “Number one, I think we need to stop doing a hip-hop scene — his situation is not a hip-hop situation. And I also would like for everyone to be mindful of the thirst and the urgency and the need to speak on the situation. I think a lot of times, people don’t realize how insensitive it could be to have opinions on things that you have no understanding of outside of what you’re being told, and we do know that propaganda is a real thing and we also know that the truth is a real thing. I like to wait for the truth before I, you know, really start to dive into trying to understand, because I think understanding is the absence of confusion. Understanding is the reflection of knowledge and wisdom. The truth is undisputed. I think that we kind of like confuse ourselves prematurely, pass judgment, and we’re not realizing how much we can directly and indirectly affect everyone involved with our unwarranted opinions.”
Rhymes noted, “With that being said, I’m going to reserve my opinions and I’m going to wish the best for everyone involved and… the one thing that we should take away from what I’m saying is everybody probably need to mind their damn business until the truth is undisputed. At that point, justice needs to be served accordingly for everyone involved.”
He said, “It’s unfortunate because I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy, and I’m talking about for the victims and I’m talking about for Diddy.”