Joe Budden isn’t pleased with Drake’s recent radio silence. After consistently communicating with Budden throughout his beef with Kendrick Lamar, Drake has now gone off the radar, leaving Budden miffed.
In a recent episode of his podcast, Joe Budden detailed how Drake has stopped reaching out to him since the beef with Kendrick Lamar ended. Budden revealed, ‘You know the funniest thing about this? I’ve been talking to this n-gga throughout the whole beef. That n-gga ain’t speak to me since that battle ended.’ He reiterated his frustration by adding, ‘He ain’t hit me at all since that battle ended and I don’t like it. I don’t like that. You should keep the same energy.’
Budden shared on Twitter via the account @itsavibe, ‘He ain’t hit me at all since that battle ended and I don’t like it… you should keep the same energy.’ Not only did Budden express his dissatisfaction with Drake’s silence, but he also crowned Kendrick Lamar the winner of their feud. ‘I think [Kendrick] won this off skill. He was much better than Drake the whole way,’ he said on his podcast last month following the release of Kendrick’s chart-topping diss song ‘Not Like Us.’
Critiquing Drake’s battle strategy, Budden remarked, ‘If I’m battling you, I need to have my options ready for all the variables; Drake didn’t. And if you feel that way, then when I was telling you to stop saying that I’m outside looking for the n-gga that saying he been outside. All that shit he was feeding to [Akademiks], talking about,
‘Oh, it’s been 10 years.’ Nah, nah, nah — you follow it through. Don’t sound like a n-gga that’s trying to fight a losing battle!’
Adding a lighter note, Budden even danced to ‘Not Like Us’ during the episode, putting on his best Crip Walk impression. However, despite critiquing Drake’s performance in the feud, Budden didn’t hesitate to defend him afterward, especially following the leak of reference tracks from Drake’s catalog.
Asserting that Drake’s legacy remains untarnished, Budden commented, ‘I don’t care what Drake does; for me, Drake’s legacy is already kinda cemented. A lot more has to happen for him to look as bad as some of y’all want us to view him as. I don’t think he looks the greatest right now, but I don’t care.’ He maintained his support by saying, ‘I don’t care that I don’t think he can rap like he wants to rap. I don’t care that the slaps don’t sound the same. I got Views, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, Nothing Was the Same, Take Care, So Far Gone.’
Budden concluded that despite any controversy over who writes Drake’s music, its timeless quality remains. ‘I got the music that I need from him. It is phenomenal, no matter who wrote it. It sounds timeless, no matter who wrote it. And it continues to work.’
Joe Budden clearly has mixed feelings about the whole situation. While he’s frustrated with Drake’s silence and critical of his handling of the Kendrick Lamar beef, he still respects Drake’s legacy in the music industry.