Joe Budden Calls State Of Current Hip-Hop "Disgusting"

Joe Budden gets paid to spew his often controversial opinions about Hip-Hop—and his recent appearance on The GAUDS Show was no different. During the conversation, the former Slaughterhouse rapper didn’t seem too optimistic about Hip-Hop/rap’s future, calling it “dark.” He expounded on the topic, saying artists are so confused on which way to go, it makes it that much harder to navigate the current landscape.

“Everybody can’t go do a show, everybody can’t get a song on a playlist,” he said. “Everybody can’t access their fans, or the information behind these units that they’re moving. It’s dark out there. [People] don’t know how to respond to AI, label people are leaving for the tech companies, they’re playing all types of stock games at the top. Selling IPOs … their artists are not getting one red penny. It’s disgusting out there.”

Budden then suggested a “meeting” with “everybody” to come up with a solution.

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The use of artificial intelligence in music has been in a lot of conversations as of late. More recently, Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr. enraged artists when he suggested the AI-generated Drake song “Heart On My Sleeve” would be eligible for a Grammy Award. Earlier this month, the song’s anonymous creator, Ghostwriter, launched a new track that featured AI-generated vocals akin to Travis Scott and 21 Savage.

Following the release of the video, the New York Times reported that Ghostwriter was angling for a Grammy nomination and quoted Mason saying the Drake song is “absolutely eligible because it was written by a human.”

He later clarified his comments in a video shared via social media, saying, “Even though it was written by a human creator, the vocals were not legally obtained; the vocals were not cleared by the label or the artists; and the song is not commercially available. Because of that, it’s not eligible. The Academy is here to support and advocate and protect and represent human artists and human creators, period.”