During a recent episode of his podcast, Joe Budden weighed in on tributes to the 50th anniversary of hip hop. He describes feeling like labels should be doing more to celebrate the milestone, as opposed to leaving it to artists. Budden claims that labels should be putting on huge shows, on the level of major festivals like Rolling Loud. He also says that the lack of acknowledgement from record labels could be an indicator of a poor relationship with their legacy acts, noting that they could simply pay artists to participate.
"Y'all don't think it's a little odd," he begins, "that without Nas and Jesse Collins, without Mass Appeal and Jesse Collins, we don't get a tribute?" Parks Vallely then calls out Def Jam in particular, claiming that the label should have put together a festival. Though Budden says he doesn't want to go too hard on the label, he says it's strange. "Y'all are the ones that was supposed to do that," he explains.
Joe Budden On Labels Failing To Put Together Hip-Hop 50 Tributes
Joe Budden isn't the only one to call people out amid the genre's 50th anniversary. Earlier this week, Ebro took aim at artists, claiming that many have failed to properly acknowledge the milestone. "Making all this $$$ because of HipHop and artists can’t even post a ‘Thank You’ …” he wrote on Twitter. Though there's been a good amount of events for the anniversary, it's clear that there's still a lack of credit being given where it's due.
Budden even noted the similarities in he and Ebro's thought processes, weighing in on his take. “Funny, i said this same thing about the labels lol,” he commented on a repost of the original Tweet. It's safe to say that there's many who feel the genre isn't being adequately celebrated amid the anniversary for its contributions to culture and music as a whole.