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Joe Budden, whose only hit single, “Pump It Up,” finally achieved Gold status in 2023, is weighing in on the current state of “girl Rap:—calling the fan-created sub-sector “over.”
During his most recent episode of the Joe Budden Podcast, the former Love & Hip Hop star called out “girl rappers” while sharing his disdain for the bars after Cardi B released her highly-anticipated song, “Like What.”
“Y’all ain’t gonna want to hear it from me, but the girl rapper wave is over. Just telling you what it is,” Budden said. “The cream rises to the top, so Latto shall remain; Flo Milli shall remain; Rapsody will always be there, but she wasn’t really a part of [that scene]. But all of that, ‘Go find a girl, send her to Columbia, get it done, put her in the studio with f*cking Mike WiLL [Made-It] or any one of them n-ggas’—all that planting the girl in the scene, getting the record and it taking off—that wave is over.”
Budden’s scorching hot take came on the heels of Cardi B’s “Like What (Freestyle),” in which during the show, he suggested that the Bronx-bred MC is “scared” to release her highly-anticipated album over fears of the potential backlash awaiting her.
“Cardi B is afraid, and I’m tired of just nobody saying it,” said Budden. “Cardi B is scared to come out, it don’t take this long to come out.”
Joe Budden on Cardi being scared to drop and the girl rap wave being over. pic.twitter.com/se9xTD0E9L
— Dash (@WATTBA10) March 2, 2024
While Budden made a few valid points regarding the carbon copy method currently being used by the industry across the board, asserting his opinion when women are dominating and their male counterparts are fighting for their lives and starving for mentors is disingenuous. The continued lack of true concern over the problematic messaging that pushes drug use, violence and misogyny toward women in music and male-only podcast spaces aimed at men is alarming.
It also has to be noted that as a former artist, to see Budden play into the attempt to divide women in Rap from their male counterparts is not only reductive but also divisive in a genre that women had a major hand in co-creating. Then to announce that female rappers are “done” as if you have authority in the space is not only asinine but also egregious because it’s not supported by any facts.
In 2021, Cardi B made history in early March, becoming the first female rapper to have five No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Two years after she won Best Rap Album at the 2019 Grammys. That same year, Megan Thee Stallion picked up three awards, including Best New Artist. Doja Cat and Chika each received Grammy nominations in different categories–during that time and since, the new school of male rappers were absent.
Even though she hasn’t released a full album since 2018, Cardi B has been consistently putting out music. Following the release of Invasion of Privacy, Cardi has dropped six Top 100 singles (“Please Me,” “Hot Sh-t,” “Up,” “Bongos,” “Tomorrow 2 (Remix)” and the highly-decorated single, “WAP”)—which is why Offset took to Instagram to post the caption: “Stop being scary and drop the album s–t goes crazy [fire emoji].”
Regardless of how you feel about the messaging of female artists, for the last five years, women have been leading the pack. When gun violence and drugs were taking out some of Rap’s biggest artists, women were stepping up and making a name for themselves by giving listeners an alternative to murder music. The emboldened sound, reminiscent of the glam girl rap Lil’ Kim created, ushered in a new wave of boss women who weren’t taking any mess—but that’s seemingly why Joey and his band of incels are upset.
To continue to use the “BBL” and “lipo” comments as a rule only for women when men are getting them too—we all saw Funk Flex live in action on the table bumping “CREAM.” Let’s not forget Kanye West and Drake (allegedly)—yet no public slander or mention of it while deducing women in the same genre are doing the same thing as gimmicks, doesn’t make sense. Especially when the gimmick being used on young men is to have “opps” or be drug kingpins and gang leaders.
The truth is, most of these men with opinions on women in anything need to find a young man to mentor and coach to sub-par-dom, because the whole trying to get clicks off of hating on someone who made it further than you thing is over.