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# An Artist Describes the Apocalypse According to Busta Rhymes
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/an-artist-describes-the-apocalypse-according-to-busta-rhymes/
- Published: 2017-02-22T23:16:54.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:12:59.000Z
- Description: Aria Dean's upcoming lecture at Machine Project, "Busta Rhymes at the End of the World," will focus on apocalyptic themes in the rapper's oeuvre.
- Author: Matt Stromberg
- Tags: Art, Aria Dean, Events, Machine Project, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:23 (2016, 2017, part 2)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/02/dean.jpg)

Busta Rhymes, “E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event): The Final World Front” (image via Machine Project)

Aria Dean has become a prominent voice in contemporary culture through her work as an artist, writer, and [assistant curator of net art for Rhizome](http://rhizome.org/editorial/2016/sep/22/announcing-aria-dean-appointed-as-rhizomes-assistant-curator-of-net-art/?ref=hyperallergic.com). Her upcoming lecture at Machine Project “[Busta Rhymes at the End of the World](http://machineproject.com/2017/events/busta-rhymes-at-the-end-of-the-world/?ref=hyperallergic.com),”will focus on apocalyptic themes in the rapper’s oeuvre that began with his first solo album *The Coming* (1996) and continued to develop through his fifth, *Genesis* (2001), as a means of exploring new ideas in Black studies. Dean’s talk will chart a course in Black radical thought from the Black Panthers and the [Five Percent Nation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Percent%5FNation?ref=hyperallergic.com), through Afrofuturism and pioneering hip-hop aesthetics, placing Rhymes’s conceptual album suite squarely within this lineage. Now, as we seem to be teetering over the edge of a catastrophic new world order, Dean examines Rhymes’s narratives for “speaking to an [apocalyptic blackness](http://machineproject.com/2017/events/busta-rhymes-at-the-end-of-the-world/?ref=hyperallergic.com)” that holds within it the possibility of “eventual regeneration.”

**When:** Friday, February 24, 8pm  
**Where:** Machine Project (1200 D North Alvarado, Echo Park, Los Angeles)

*More info* [*here*](http://machineproject.com/2017/events/busta-rhymes-at-the-end-of-the-world/?ref=hyperallergic.com)*.*