The Rolling Stone Interview
After a marquee year for The Joe Budden Podcast, the entrepreneur and host opens up about lessons from the music industry and his quest for independence on The Rolling Stone Interview
Over the past year, The Joe Budden Podcast has solidified itself as essential listening, covering the whirlwind news in the hip-hop world. The show’s creator and host, Joe Budden, got his start rapping on East Coast mixtapes in the late Nineties and early 2000s. Alongside his current co-hosts — Queenzflip, Mona Love, Ice, Ish, Parks, and Marc Lamont Hill — Budden is now at the forefront of the zeitgeist, known for unvarnished takes on all things hip-hop culture.
It’s a far cry from his career as a rapper, perhaps best known for the chart-topping hit “Pump It Up.” Even so, he takes his craft seriously, maybe even to a fault. The 45-year-old podcast host and entrepreneur is known for on-screen rants that vary in a gradient of intensity, from visibly annoyed, like when he famously snaps on co-host Ice for still caring about a girl he never dated years later, to existentially pissed off, like in his famous interview with a teenage Lil Yachty, who was unaware of the nature of his contract. These days, Budden’s attitude is far more measured, though his passion for hip-hop hasn’t waned. His show lives somewhere between the highbrow sensibility of a PBS Newshour and the raw, uncut personality of barber shop talk.
We recently relaunched the Rolling Stone Interview as a video podcast, and on this episode, Budden discusses how he transitioned from rap to podcasting and how everything he does is a quest for true freedom. Give a watch, above, or listen wherever you find your podcasts.
