Review
Genre and Mood
Busta Rhymes released Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See in August 1997 as the first taste of his second album: hip-hop and rap at full volume, energetic, playful and bold. The playfulness is easiest to see in the video, the boldness in the delivery of a rapper who, by his own account, heard the beat and “lost my muthafuckin’ mind”.
Song Summary
The beat came from Shamello, a friend who had moved from rapping to production, and reached the studio through Fab, Busta’s road manager. Shamello and Buddah produced it, with Epitome as co-producer, around a sample of Seals and Crofts’ 1976 recording Sweet Green Fields. Busta wrote and recorded his verses at Soundtrack Studios on Broadway, and Fab recorded the intro ad-libs. Spotify credits the track to Busta Rhymes featuring Jamal; the album’s track list names Jamal only on There’s Not a Problem My Squad Can’t Fix, and the label’s credit list for this track names no Jamal.
Musical Breakdown
Intro
Fab’s ad-libs open the track, recorded in the style of Puff Daddy at Busta’s request.
Verses
The song rests on Busta’s verses over the looped sample. No source maps them bar by bar; listen to how his voice changes pace and pitch inside the same beat.
Outro
At three minutes and fourteen seconds, the album track is short. Listen for how it stops.
Concepts in Focus
sampling is why James Seals, of Seals and Crofts, is credited as a writer of a 1997 rap single: the beat is built on Sweet Green Fields, and its writer shares the song.
The music video began by accident. While the track was being mixed, Coming to America was playing silently on the studio television, and Busta called Hype Williams to say, “I want to do Coming to America all over.” Designed by Ron Norsworthy and shot in Lower Manhattan, including the lobby of the Surrogate’s Courthouse, it cost, Busta recalled, “$800,000, maybe $900,000”; MTV ranked it 20th of its 100 greatest music videos in 1999.
A <a href=“https://korczis.github.io/sonic-playground/concept/featured-artist/” class=“concept-link font-medium text-primary-700 underline decoration-dotted underline-offset-4 hover:decoration-solid dark:text-primary-400” data-concept=“featured-artist” title=“A guest performer credited on another artist’s track, usually as “feat.”: a rapper’s verse, a singer’s hook or a second voice. Features bring together different styles and audiences and are central to hip-hop, R&B and dance music.“>featured artist credit names a guest on another artist’s track. This page keeps the credit as the owner’s Spotify yearbook gives it, and records that the label’s own credits for this recording, like the album’s track list, do not include him.
Artistic Context
When Disaster Strikes… followed on 16 September 1997 on Flipmode and Elektra, continuing the apocalypse theme of The Coming; it reached number three on the Billboard 200 and went platinum. Busta’s ad-lib request points at the Puff Daddy of the same New York years, heard on Method Man, Mary J. Blige – I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need To Get By - Puff Daddy Mix.
Impact and Reception
The single reached number 16 in the UK and number two on the US R&B/Hip-Hop airplay chart, and was nominated for the Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance. VH1 later ranked it seventh of the 40 greatest hip-hop songs of the 1990s. Play it loud, then watch the video.
