Don Toliver has credited Joe Budden for giving him confidence early on in his career which ended up propelling him into the Cactus Jack Records juggernaut he is today.
Joining Budden on an episode of The Joe Budden Podcast, Toliver reflected on the inspiring moment Budden posted him on his Snapchat after he handed the “Pump It Up” rapper a CD when he was relatively unknown in 2017.
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“You gave us hope, bro,” he recalled. “You went up on the Snapchat, everything bro, we were so lit in the car. We was outside in the car like, ‘Ay, n-gga posted us!’ Bro, we was going crazy.
“You don’t understand the hope that gave us, bro. And we just felt like we could do it after that, like without a doubt. I felt like I knew I — after that, I was like, ‘We good!’ You know something popped.”
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The JB Podcast clip also included a flashback to the exchange of Don Toliver handing the CD to Budden and begging him to give his music a chance.
“Please pop that! Don Toliver, Yung Josh 93,” Toliver said.
Budden jokingly responded: “Thank you, gentlemen. Ay, stop handing CDs out! No CDs!”
Six years later it’s a full circle moment with Toliver becoming a force in the music industry and him stopping by to see Joe Budden and make his debut on the podcast. Don T is coming off the release of his new Love Sick album, which arrived last week.
Elsewhere in the interview, the 28-year-old touched on some of his early Hip Hop influences and gave credit to Kendrick Lamar and Dom Kennedy for inspiring him to become an artist in high school.
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“When I was in high school, I got really deep into Kendrick Lamar and I got deep into Dom Kennedy. Overly Dedicated really stuck with me very heavily as one of the first projects I got hip to Kendrick on,” he explained.
“Dom Kennedy, like, he was the real person I feel like as an artist that made me feel like, ‘Nah, I could be an artist. I could swag.’ Ain’t nothing really touching me type energy is when I would listen to Dom. That’s what really made me I got to turn up.”
