Jersey rapper-turned-podcaster Joe Budden says label owners like Gucci Man (and by extension his wife Keyshia Ka’Oir) are a part of the problem with Hip-Hop over the last 10 years.
The “Pump it Up” chart-topper said on his hit podcast that one of the reasons rap music has been so popping is because the “keeping it real” element is being lived out through the unfortunate deaths, RICO cases, and overdoses that have plagued the culture recently.
He said, “Who people are signing, how people are signing them, and why people are signing them needs to be under thorough examination.”
“I think all parties involved in the music business [should look at music] the same way that in sports last decade when injuries started happening at a rapid rate that they had never seen before and studies and new science showed that the game was affecting players bodies differently,” he continued, offering, “So, they started coming up with all these new theories like shorten the season or let’s make the playoffs smaller.”
Budden suggests people should fall back and look at the rap world over the last decade with the same level of concern and have a desire to put something in place to help shift the phenomenon.
The thought leader said, “The same thing has happened in rap in the last decade. We have never seen this many people die. We’ve never seen these many shootings, stabbings, arrests, clique beef, RICO charges. I have never seen it in Hip-Hop and it runs concurrent for me with the death of the A&R and the death of musicianship.”
“I say Gucci mane’s scouting needs to be under report I mean under examination it’s because this is now what 8,9, 10 … I don’t know … but a whole roster that is just suffering from the ‘Different Strokes’ curse. And I don’t think it’s coincidence anymore.”
The artist, who got his start in Def Jam in the early 2000s said the culture is even “scary” to him.
“It don’t matter that one of them made a good song and now sold however many millions,” he said n this “new space” life expectancy for rappers is even shorter than already was years ago.
He said he was not tiptoeing around the issue. “These n##gas, sign n##gas. They get their money. They take their money and do something else with it. Now, we bought a bunch of guns. We have tanks. Now, we have reason to be in every city around the globe. We have reasons to move with 80 and 90 people, SWAT protection,” he said.
“There is a reason this is going on and it is not so music based.”