Joe Budden 'Hated' Every Hip Hop 50 Celebration: '[It Was] Depressing'

Joe Budden has revealed that he had a number of issues with last year’s various Hip Hop 50 celebrations, which he explained during a recent episode of his show.

The rapper-turned-podcaster compared his thoughts about the 2023 events to those expressed by KRS-One, who lamented the Grammys tribute to Hip Hop back in December.

“I hate all them shits,” Budden said. “They coulda celebrated Hip Hop and honored Hip Hop, which is what KRS-One was saying. He was saying, ‘Why would I show up to these events to celebrate Hip Hop and there’s no Hip Hop there?’”

He went on to add that it was performative for record label promotion. Check out the full clip from Budden below.

KRS-One has been consistently vocal in his resistance to Hip Hop 50 celebrations. In an interview from December, the legendary MC explained he turned down a personal invite from LL COOL J himself as he felt the Grammys hadn’t shown love to the culture until Hip Hop 50 celebrations began.

“I was asked about two months ago; they asked me to do it and I turned them down,” he said. “With all due respect, LL COOL J himself called me, spoke to my wife and pretty much begged for me to be on the show but we turned him down. And reason being is because I know people don’t understand this — and I say this respectfully. KRS-One is a Hip Hop extremist. I’m not violent, a violent extremist. I’m insane with this culture. I know I must have lost my mind in this.”

He continued: “I don’t fight it, I don’t apologize for it. I recognize that my experience in this thing called Hip Hop is different from mostly everybody else’s experience with Hip Hop. […] I restrict myself in a certain way, because I know who I am in this culture. You’re in the temple of Hip Hop, this is our home. This place, this institution can never side with, come under, understand the exploitation of our culture. Never will you ever see me standing in the environment where our culture is being exploited.”

Budden has had plenty to say about a number of other topics of late, including his relationship with JAY-Z.

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The artist and host confessed in December that he didn’t “handle himself well” during his rift with Hov after the latter took over at Def Jam.

Appearing on The Pivot Podcast, hosted by former NFL stars Ryan Clark, Fred Taylor and Channing Crowder, Budden admitted that he wished he had handled things differently with his former label boss.

“When JAY-Z got his role as president of Def Jam, I was a young artist on Def Jam trying to work on my second album. And at that time, a lot of the artists on Def Jam had an issue with JAY-Z being the president,” he said.