The Drake vs. Budden dispute, explained!

OPINION: It all made sense to me when I learned that Drake used to look up to Joe Budden.

Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.

It was a real eureka moment. I finally understood what had happened. Let me go back — at first, I was confused. Drake looked out at a world full of people who were saying his very new and very mid album “For All the Dogs” was mid. Anthony Fontano gave it 5 out of 10 and called it “Another bloated head-scratcher.” NME called it “deeply mid.” I called it worse than mid. Pitchfork used the word “boring.” But when Joe Budden called it mid, just like everyone else, Drake turned into the Incredible Hulk. Budden did not stomp on the album like I did. He was respectful, even though he was disdainful, but only Budden got a long written retort on Drake’s IG. Why would Drake, one of the biggest artists in the world, take a break from enjoying his private jet to write a long, tired respond to a negative review from a podcaster who’s nowhere near Drake’s level of fame? And then I found out. That’s when I had that eureka moment.

Some angel online pointed out a 2019 Drake interview on Rap Radar where Drake said, “I used to rap like Budden back in the day like the way I used to try and get certain flows off.” That’s when I understood. Drake used to look up to Budden as an MC — when Drake was young, he tried to rhyme like him — so, of course, it would hurt to hear that guy diss Drake’s project. The long, petulant IG response — which boiled down to I succeeded in rap more than you and I have more money than you — felt defensive because it was. The other reviews he could shake off but not one from Budden. In therapy, they talk about how you sometimes get angry because you feel a need to defend the younger you. Drake definitely feels like he’s going to war to protect that younger Drake who lives inside of him, who would be crushed to hear Budden poop on his album. 

We also learned something helpful from DJ Akademiks, which is a phrase I never had to write before. Akademiks apparently had a phone call with Drake where, according to Akademiks, the “rapper” said “the criticism is not the problem.” His real issue was the “super personal shots about how I’m living,” by which he means Budden asking why Drake is talking so damn much about dating 25-year-old women. Sounds like Drake is in his feelings. Again.

Now some of you may be saying, wait, why would Drake, who can rap his butt off, care so much about Budden’s opinion and why would he want to rhyme like the guy from “Pump It Up”? First of all, Drake is not a good rapper. You need to get a hold of yourselves. As far as rapping ability, he’s not in a class with J. Cole and Kendrick. He rhymes like a slam poet. The flows aren’t elite, the lyrics aren’t elite, only the sales are. Get a grip. But, more to the point, Budden’s lone commercial success, “Pump It Up,” is not at all representative of who he was as a rapper. That’s not who Drake was talking about when he says he tried to rhyme like Budden. The music that truly defined who Budden was as an MC is what he did on his mixtapes.

In the ’90s, the mixtape became a really important hip-hop subgenre. DJs like Ron G, Doo Wop, DJ Clue and others got rappers to jump on hot beats and give us amazing rhymes. A mixtape might take several of the hottest beats behind some of the biggest songs of the moment and have the great names of the day spitting a rhyme over them. Unheard of MCs could sometimes get in, too, and maybe make a name for themselves, which they could translate into some fame. In the early years, mixtapes would be a series of singles from various artists, but as time went on, some MCs put out a whole album’s worth of material as a mixtape.

The mixtape was an important platform as far as a place to really show off your skill. On mixtapes, MCs did things that they wouldn’t normally do on their label releases. They’d rhyme harder, like with more aggression or intensity, or they’d say wilder things, or try new styles — it was like they knew the mixtape audience consisted of nothing but serious hip-hop fans so they came with their A game, but they also knew that not many people would hear it, so they let themselves be whoever they really wanted to be. For a lot of my favorite MCs, the greatest thing they ever spat was for a mixtape because that’s where they really let it all hang out. These were brand new songs, but they would never jump from the mixtapes to the mainstream so it was a really important scene all on its own within the hip-hop world. Fans had to know where to go to find these mixtapes — certain street vendors always had the newest ones. I remember going down to corner of the Fulton Mall in Brooklyn every Friday afternoon to cop the latest Doo Wop or Clue or whatever looked hot. I’d buy as many as I could. I really miss that mixtape era. There’s nothing like it in hip-hop today, and it was really exciting to hear people go all out on a mixtape. Everyone knew that it was a special platform.

In the ’00s, Budden got some renown for a series of mixtapes called “Mood Muzik” — in 2018, Complex ranked “Mood Muzik 2” as the 12th best mixtape of all time. Budden was an important member of an important, relatively underground part of hip-hop culture. That’s the guy young Drake was looking up to and emulating on the mic. And when you factor in that aspect of Budden’s career, sure, Drake is far more commercially successful, but he’s not a serious rapper like Kendrick or J. Cole or Nas or … But, long ago, when he was a young artist listening to Budden with his headphones, he thought that maybe one day he could be a serious rapper. To have Budden call his new album mid is an attack on his dream. I bet Drake’s therapist is going to have to talk a lot about Budden over the next few months.

Touré is a host and Creative Director at theGrio. He is the host of Masters of the Game on theGrioTV. He is also the host and creator of the docuseries podcast “Being Black: The ’80s” and the animated show “Star Stories with Toure” which you can find at TheGrio.com/starstories. He is also the host of the podcast “Toure Show” and the podcast docuseries “Who Was Prince?” He is the author of eight books including the Prince biography Nothing Compares 2 U and the ebook The Ivy League Counterfeiter.

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