For the first time in a couple of hours of motor-paced good humour, the fire dims in Busta Rhymes’s eyes and his expressive face begins to show signs of impatience, even irritability. The 36-year-old rap star has spent the afternoon playing his forthcoming, eighth LP, Back on My B. S., to a dozen journalists in a Manhattan recording studio. Even in front of such a tiny crowd he remains the consummate showman: he’s got more bounce than Tigger, and the excitement he has for his new music is infectious.

But he seems to slump when asked about the controversies that have swirled around him over the past four years: the string of court appearances on weapons and assault charges, the embarrassing 18 hours he spent in customs at London City airport before he was allowed into Britain to perform a charity gig last year, and the killing of a friend and bodyguard on the set of one of his videos in 2006. When I interviewed him then, he had been a pensive figure, discussing the loss and the sense of responsibility he felt for his friend’s death (“If I didn’t ask him to come to work, he’d have been at home with his family”) in the context of music that crackled with intimations of his own mortality.

Now he prefers to focus on the present: “All I try to do is get past the shit, you know? And I did.” Is it all passed now? “I’m good,” he grins. “I’m in an amazing space in my life. I don’t have none of those issues no more and it feels great. ”

Over the course of a 20-year career, the likeable New Yorker has carved out a niche both as hip-hop’s court jester and as one of the music’s most successful iconoclasts, his gravel-throated baritone constantly sought out to spice up other people’s records, his own LPs bucking every trend by attracting ever-larger audiences.

There are few artists in any genre who have successfully combined ever-increasing commercial success with a restless, avant-garde aesthetic, but Rhymes has made it a habit. From his first solo single, the 1995 hit Woo-Hah! Got You All in Check, to his November 2008 download Arab Money, he has managed to make music that packs an infectious, instinctive dancefloor punch while sounding as though it belongs to the not-too-distant future. Even his first group, Leaders of the New School, released an album based around an elaborate concept about time and perception. In some ways, he is hip-hop’s Radiohead — experimental yet accessible, and hugely respected by his peers.

He laughs off the episode at London City airport (“It was cool! They put me in a room, let me watch TV, fed me; we took a lot of pictures and signed a lot of autographs. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was fun”) and insists that the dispute, over improperly signed work permits, is now resolved.

But the killing of his friend, Israel Ramirez, cast a lengthy shadow over what ought to have been a career high. His seventh album, The Big Bang — which had been the first fruit of a new partnership with the producer Dr Dre, who helped to turn Snoop Dogg, Eminem and 50 Cent into household names — became his first US chart-topper. Then last year the relationship with Dre’s Aftermath label disintegrated, leaving Rhymes to find a new home for an album he’d only just begun.

“But I’m happy for that experience because I learnt a lot. I had five years with one of the greatest geniuses in the world, and Jimmy Iovine [the boss of Aftermath’s parent company, Interscope] let me leave with all of my music.”

Perhaps his greatest gift is that willingness to learn, though it helps that he has had teachers as illustrious as Dre and the Public Enemy leader Chuck D, who discovered the teenaged Trevor Smith on Long Island in the 1980s and gave him his nickname, derived from that of an American football player. “A lot of artists have realised that if you wanna lay claim to territory wherever you go in the world, you gotta plant seeds first,” Chuck said last year, noting that Rhymes is not one of the many US rap stars who all but ignore the world beyond their country’s borders. “Busta realised that. He was told to realise it.”

Another key influence was provided even earlier, by the example set by his Jamaican parents, and in particular his mother, Geraldine. Today, when he’s away on tour, she shoulders much of the responsibility for the three of his four children who live with him (although in a relationship, he is not married; in 2006 he won an eight-year custody battle over three of his sons with their mother, whom he had known since schooldays). He says his mother is “the boss — it doesn’t matter if I’m home, if I’m not home, if the home’s full o’ children — she’s always gonna be queen of the castle”, and says she instilled a sense of responsibility about money that has helped to keep the Rhymes career on track.

“When I first got my record deal I was 17 years old, so I was too young to sign my own contract,” he says. “So to be able to make records I had to play by certain stipulations that my mother made. I couldn’t take my money and squander it: the money would go to my accounts, but my mother was a signatory on them. By the time I was old enough to know what to do with my money she’d shown me all about putting it into things that were safe investments.”

Encouraged by his mother, who had made money in real estate, he invested in residential and commercial property; he now splits his time between homes in New York, Miami and Los Angeles, his parents owning houses close by in each city. Ironically, considering that he predicted a global financial meltdown on 1990s albums such as When Disaster Strikes, Extinction Level Event and Anarchy, Rhymes has been a victim of the slumping property market. But his main concern right now is shoring up the crumbling music industry. His prescription? Make better records.

“I’m about reinstating the value of the content by putting great music out,” he concludes, typically bullishly. “I have a problem with a ringtone costing more than my single on iTunes: that is backwards to me. If we make a conscious effort to reestablish the value of the content by putting hot albums out, people will start to feel a little differently about spending their money on just a ringtone, and they’ll spend more of their money on good albums.”

And he grins once again, daring you to believe that it might just be that easy.

Back on My B. S. is released by Universal on May 19

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