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Joe Budden shed a little light on the business of the rap industry in an interview, revealing that Jay-Z asked for a steep price tag to appear on his hit track when he was starting out.
The media personality and rapper appeared on the latest episode of the Flip Da Script Podcast and spoke about his career, beginning with the success of his 2002 single “Pump It Up”. It garnered so much acclaim that Jay-Z released an unofficial freestyle remix which seemed to deliver a few shots at Budden himself. The New Jersey native revealed to hosts QueenzFlip and DJ Gmoney that he had asked the iconic MC to appear on the remix officially, and a member of his team got back to Budden and revealed his price – $250,000. ”I don’t think that was a big number, I think that was his number. ‘That’s my number to rap on this new artist’s remix.’ It was just big in my world, but it wasn’t a big number,” he said.
Budden wasn’t able to get the money up to pay that asking price since it was more than half of the allotted budget he received from Def Jam for his debut album. But he now regards the entire situation as a learning experience: “Listen, again, I’m super young in that moment. I wasn’t in the studio when they (Budden’s A&R Skane and the rep for Jay-Z) had the conversation. I knew that they had some type of relationship,” Budden said. “It was a Just Blaze beat and I was green behind the ears. I just thought that it would get done. I didn’t know anything about the business and how things like that are supposed to go. That was par the course.”
Ultimately, Jay-Z hopping on the beat to do a freestyle a month afterward added to what Budden called a “blessing”. “It was big to me because it was unattainable,” he ultimately said of the fee. “It was outside of my budget, but the blessing was that he gave a number.”
