Busta Rhymes urges fans to respect his personal space

BUSTA RHYMES has pleaded with his fans to ask before they take a picture of him.

The rapper said he hates it when his personal space is invaded by people taking pictures of him on their mobile phones without his permission.

And he added that although he has fully embraced the advancement of technology, he also has mixed feelings about it because it can dehumanising people" by reducing personal interaction

Rhymes, real name Trevor Smith, said: "I like technology, but I don't like what people are letting technology do to them. There's a lot of things we couldn't do without technology.

"But when it gets to the point where... just the little things in life like, for example, where somebody comes up to your face and snaps your picture, doesn't ask. I feel like the quality of privacy and respect of people's personal space has been completely disintegrated.

"You can ask to take the picture. I will be so glad to take the picture and pose and look good for the picture. But when you catch me while I'm looking real sideways (bad) and the picture's ugly as hell, I don't want you to have the picture like that! So technology just destroyed that considerate thing."

And he admitted that he is not a fan of text messaging and would much prefer to talk to people directly.

He said: "Now, if I'm calling you to say 'what's up?' but you ain't picking up the phone, because it's more convenient for you to text me back, I don't understand that.

"What happened to the human interaction? It's dehumanising people. They don't have to talk to each other anymore."

But he admitted that he has been drawn into the social networking craze and loves to keep fans up to date via his various online blogs.

He added: "I'm a Twitter junkie; I'm a MySpace junkie; I'm a YouTube junkie, all of that. I'm kept thoroughly abreast with that. So technology lets me keep in touch with fans like never before."