Joe Budden responds to claims that Jay-Z wanted $250,000 for a verse

NME

Joe Budden has cleared up the rumours surrounding Jay-Z wanting Budden to pay him $250,000 to feature on a song.

The song in question is ‘Pump It Up’, Joe Budden’s most popular track. Since the song’s release in 2004, hip-hop fans have speculated that Jay-Z wanting a large payout is the reason why he failed to feature on the rapper-turned-media-personality’s remix.

Whilst on the Drink Champs podcast, the 42-year-old confirmed the cash amount is a rumour, saying that Jay-Z’s demands were “big”: “I didn’t personally ask him. I couldn’t personally speak to him.”

He told rapper NORE that his A&R, Skane, was in conversations with Jay-Z and wasn’t sure how to deal with the rumour when it came out.

He said that, at the time, he knew “that I don’t have 250 grand” to pay for the feature”. The Roc Nation mogul was seemingly upset by this and released a diss track about Budden‘s over the ‘Pump It Up’ beat.

He also mentioned Webb, the executive producer of his 2003 eponymous debut album, “put the battery in [his] back” in regards to HOV’s diss track: ” [He said], ‘You gon’ let him do that? Nah, you gotta get to the studio right now!’”

Talking on the Flip Da Script podcast, Budden mentioned that Jay-Z’s offer was steep but understandable.

“It was just big in my world, but it wasn’t a big number,” he said. “Listen, I’m super young in that moment. I wasn’t in the studio when they [Jay and Budden’s A&R, Skane] had the conversation. I knew that they had some type of relationship… I was green behind the ears. I mean, just thought that it would get done.”

In the same episode of Drink Champs, Budden also addressed the demands to do another album. “People are shocked by my resistance to that idea,” he said.

The last album Budden released was 2016’s ‘Rage & The Machine’.

He has become a popular hip-hop commentator, starting his own platform Joe Budden TV in 2007, which later hosted his infamous The Joe Budden Podcast.

He told Drink Champs that the public “don’t understand how liberating it feels” to have a podcast. He continued: “Wake up, I go down the street, I talk to my friends, and then I go home—twice a week. Just really sit with that.”

In other news, Joe Budden said J.Cole and J.Hope‘s collaborative track ‘Procrastination (Broke)’ was “pandering”. Budden’s comments about Logic being the “worst rapper” ever made him feel like “a failure”, which Joe later apologised for.

Meanwhile, it was recently revealed that Jay-Z “respectfully passed” on the opportunity to provide a guest verse on Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape Of You‘.

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