Busta Rhymes was a recent guest on Diary Of A CEO, where he discussed the loss of his manager and friend Chris Lighty of Violator Management. An emotional Busta described Chris as not only a mentor and manager, but as a brother.
"Chris was all that I knew," he explained. "Everything that I learned after Chuck D and Hank Shocklee I learned it with Chris. I learned how to get money with Chris, my tax brackets changed, my lawyers changed, my booking agents, my touring experiences, and my ability to tell my mother to quit her job and never have to look back and work for nobody from 1995 until this day, all of that I did it with Chris."
Busta says that he gave Chris a ride to Grand Central Station to pick up his daughter, and that was his last time seeing him alive. "The next morning I get the call from his assistant that something happened to him, and that he hurt himself," he recalled. "When we got to Chris' home we couldn't go into the house, and it wasn't until you saw the coroner van come and reverse the van into the driveway and bring those black body bags out that everything changed. My life was going in another direction, and I was lost for a minute because I never had to manage my career without a manager. It got scary, and I couldn't get it together, thats why I didn't put out no records for nine years."
