The 1990s File Feature
What's It Gonna Be?!
What's It Gonna Be?!: Busta Rhymes, Janet, and the Spectacle of 1999 A Meeting of Two Powerhouses Picture the spring of 1999 through the lens of a music vide…
01 The Story
What's It Gonna Be?!: Busta Rhymes, Janet, and the Spectacle of 1999
A Meeting of Two Powerhouses
Picture the spring of 1999 through the lens of a music video channel. The visual language of pop was in full baroque excess: videos had budgets that looked like small film productions, special effects were arriving faster than the industry could decide what to do with them, and the concept of "event" status had been attached to an increasing number of releases. Into this environment came the collaboration between Busta Rhymes and Janet Jackson, two artists whose careers were operating on different trajectories but who shared a gift for spectacle and a commitment to the visual dimension of pop that made their partnership feel genuinely logical.
Busta Rhymes, born Trevor George Smith Jr., had spent the 1990s building one of hip-hop's most distinctive presences. His voice was an instrument of remarkable range and power, capable of going from conversational to explosive within a single verse, and his delivery style, with its emphatic rhythmic attack and theatrical intensity, was immediately recognizable. By 1999, he was releasing his fourth studio album, E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event): The Final World Front, a project that leaned into apocalyptic futurism as both a musical and visual aesthetic. Janet Jackson's career was at a different kind of peak: the tail end of a remarkable run that had included the Control and janet. eras and established her as one of the most complete pop artists of her generation.
The Sound and the Visual
What's It Gonna Be?! was built for maximum impact. The production is dense and kinetic, with electronic textures, bass frequencies, and rhythmic elements that push the arrangement forward with relentless energy. Busta's verses operate at the intense end of his delivery spectrum, stacking syllables and riding the beat with the kind of technical precision that makes his rapid-fire style seem effortless even at its most demanding. Janet Jackson's contributions are more measured: she functions as the song's melodic center, providing vocal warmth and R&B sophistication against which Busta's intensity plays. The combination is less about two voices meeting in the middle than about two distinct aesthetics generating productive friction.
The music video, directed with a science fiction aesthetic that suited the album's concept, became one of the more visually striking clips of the year. Special effects that were then at the cutting edge of what video budgets could achieve gave the whole production a sense of scale that reinforced the song's grandiosity.
A Spectacular Chart Run
What's It Gonna Be?! entered the Billboard Hot 100 on March 13, 1999, debuting at number 66. The climb from that position to the top was remarkably rapid: by March 27 it had leaped to number 8, and within weeks it reached its peak of number 3 on April 17, 1999. That top-three placement was among the highest chart positions of Busta Rhymes' solo career and confirmed that the collaboration had produced something with genuine crossover appeal, bringing together hip-hop fans who followed Busta and pop and R&B listeners who followed Janet. The song spent 20 weeks on the Hot 100 in total, a run that reflected consistent airplay across multiple radio formats simultaneously.
Legacy and the Collaboration's Place in Both Careers
For Busta Rhymes, What's It Gonna Be?! remains one of the signature commercial peaks of his career, a moment when his distinctive style connected with the widest possible audience without any compromise of the qualities that made it distinctive. For Janet Jackson, the collaboration was one of several notable guest appearances and partnerships that demonstrated her flexibility and her ability to operate within multiple musical contexts. The song's video would win a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video, recognizing the visual dimension that was inseparable from its commercial success.
In retrospect, the record captures something specific about 1999 pop culture: its embrace of maximalism, its confidence in scale, its belief that more was always better than less. That mood didn't survive the decade's end, but while it lasted, it produced records of this particular extravagant kind.
The Spectacle, Preserved
Put this on through a decent sound system and appreciate the sheer sonic architecture of the thing. There is a particular pleasure in music that commits completely to its own vision of grandeur.
"What's It Gonna Be?!" — Busta Rhymes and Janet's spectacular peak on the 1990s charts.
02 Song Meaning
What's It Gonna Be?!: Urgency, Decision, and the Aesthetics of Maximalism
The Question as Demand
The title of the song is an ultimatum dressed as a question. "What's it gonna be" sounds like an inquiry but functions as pressure, a demand that a decision be made, a situation be resolved, a commitment be offered or withheld. The urgency encoded in the punctuation (that exclamation mark following the question mark) suggests that the question has been asked before, that patience has worn thin, and that the moment of reckoning has arrived. This emotional register, impatience at the brink of something, gives the song its forward momentum and its specific kind of tension.
Two Voices, Two Modes
The song uses its two featured artists to embody different aspects of that tension. Busta Rhymes operates in a register of explosive confidence, his verbal assault a form of pressure in itself, making the case for commitment with the sheer force of his presence. Janet Jackson's contribution offers a contrasting quality: smoother, more melodic, holding the emotional center of the song while the more aggressive vocal elements circle around it. The interplay between these two registers creates a sonic argument that mirrors the lyrical situation: one voice pushing, another voice holding space, the relationship between them defining the stakes.
Futurism as Aesthetic Frame
The album from which this song emerged, E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event), framed its content within a science-fiction mythology of apocalypse and survival. That framing gives individual songs on the album a context that pushes their meaning toward the grandiose: a love decision, in this aesthetic frame, becomes something with cosmic weight. The maximalist production style reinforces this elevation, treating what might otherwise be a straightforward romantic demand as an event of genuine scale. This may be rhetorical excess, but it's excess that produces genuine energy in the listening experience.
What 1999 Wanted From Its Pop
The cultural moment that received this song was in a particular mood. The end of a millennium was approaching, and popular culture was oscillating between anxiety and extravagance, sometimes simultaneously. Music that matched that extravagance, that committed to scale without apology, found a ready audience. The song's top-three chart position reflects genuine listener enthusiasm for its specific qualities: the speed, the density, the collaboration's unexpected chemistry, and the sense that something large was being transacted. Pop at its most excessive can produce its own kind of pleasure, and this record is a case study in that dynamic. There is also, underneath the bombast, a genuine emotional question at the center of the song, and that anchor of feeling is what keeps the maximalism from tipping into mere noise.
"What's It Gonna Be?!" — Busta Rhymes and Janet's spectacular peak on the 1990s charts.
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