Joe Budden |
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Mon. May 05.2003 10:50 AM EDT |
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Joe Budden: Pump up the VolumeHip-hop's next big thing explains his mix tape stardom, his drugged-out past, and his very candid "pain raps." by C. Bottomley |
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Joe Budden (Linda Zacks) |
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“At a time when the whole rap game is shaking,” spits Joe Budden on his freestyle “True Stories,” “there’s a slot wide open and it’s there for the taking.” Having finally put a life of violence and addiction behind him, this poetic son of Jersey City
Budden’s cuke-cool barbs have already made a respected name on the mix tape circuit. Over beats borrowed from everyone from Snoop Dogg to Missy Elliott, he cracks “It's like she be smokin'/ played the movie wide-screen, she gonna tell me half my TV’s broken” and uses humor to dismiss the haters, crowing, “Cowards want mine/ But they pigment's off like the Dallas front line.” Budden's so-called “pain raps” provide a goose-bump factor. “Thugs Cry” is an autobiography in free verse, as the 22-year-old MC remembers a childhood as “a momma’s boy with my father’s ways,” sleeping on the streets at the height of an addiction to pills and PCP. He’s clean now, but the drama doesn’t end. “Dear Angela” is a twisted love letter to the soul mate who stabbed him, became the mother of his child, and then had his butt hauled off to jail. “True Stories” recounts the rugged path through the music business that sent him “back to the mixtapes where I don’t have to deal with the nonsense.” Recharged by his return to the street, Budden is back and, with Def Jam, going legit. His hit single “Pump It Up” is an atypical club banger, but while the jelly gets jiggling and the SUVs rock, the rapper subtly flits through a variety of rhythms and putdowns (“Can't cuddle after we done, it wasn't worth that”), wriggling his way into that wide open slot. VH1 caught up with him to talk about his battle with drugs, the learning process of battle raps, and singing along with Archie Bunker. VH1: You use a variety of rhyming styles. Did they come naturally, or did you actively work on honing various approaches? Joe Budden: Whoever I was listening to rubbed off on me. At one point Can-i-bus was my favorite artist, and then it was Method Man and the Wu-Tang. But I always listened to a wide range of music: Jazz, gospel, R&B, soul - not just rap. You can hear that on the album. There are some tracks where I’m doing nothing but singing. There’s some tracks where you’re not gonna be able to tell where I’m rhyming, because it sounds like spoken word. I try to do different things. Not consciously; it just comes out like that.[Watch Clip] VH1: Singing? What do you sing in the shower? Budden: Stupid stuff, like Luther Vandross. I might sing the theme song to All in the Family or Three’s Company. I might sing my own stuff to figure out what I can change or make better. But I sing dumb stuff. VH1: Can you remember the first rhyme that you wrote? Budden: Oh god, it was horrible! I don’t remember what it was. It was a battle rap, because that’s all I did way back. It was never me sitting down with a beat. It was always, “I’m gonna write this verse and then lyrically tear this dude’s head off.” VH1: Did you win that battle? Budden: I always won! There was nothing for me to really do but battle. I started a lot of battles, because that was the only way to showcase what I was writing. Wherever I was, I got it started, whether it was high school, a street corner, a liquor store, or rehab. As I built that clout, it became like, “You know to leave him alone.” I only ever lost two battles: once when I was 14 and another when I was 17. And I learned from both of them. VH1: Before you discovered rap what did you think you were gonna be? Budden: I always wanted to be a lawyer. I was always into Matlock and Perry Mason and Murder She Wrote. But to be a lawyer you have to get good grades in school, and me and school never really got along. VH1: Why not? Budden: I was real good in school up until the fifth grade. They used to give me placement tests, and I was always a good three or four grades ahead of where I was. The classes bored me. As a result of the boredom and being a teenager, I started getting high. A lot of people were able to do to casually smoke or drink and maintain A averages or keep their job. I wasn’t one of those people. It was more like the drugs used me. VH1: Was there a single turning point where you realized you had to clean up? Budden: I was doing weed, angel dust, pills, everything of that nature. One day I came home and I looked a wreck. My mom just cried her ass off. I’d never seen her like that before. She was on her knees on the floor, crying, screaming at me. That hurt. Along with the other things that were going on with me, like sleeping in parks, I was in a real bad predicament. I knew that I couldn’t keep seeing my mom like that. VH1: How do you kick a vicious cocktail like that? Budden: I voluntarily went into rehab on July 3rd, 1997. I stayed there for almost a year and then I left. I didn’t finish the program. I just ran away. With my track record, my mom and my friends thought, “Oh my god! All hell’s about to break loose!” But from that point on I never did anything else. VH1: You’re not holding back on “Thugs Cry” or “Dear Angela.” Did you deal with your problems through writing as well as rehab? Budden: I learned that the more I keep in, the more it’ll eventually hurt. Writing has always been therapy for me. It’s like with anything - you have a problem, you talk to somebody about it, you feel a little better. When people hear these songs , they say “Damn, you really put your business out there.” But I’m helping me, and if you like it, cool. VH1: You’re not afraid to get in touch with your feelings on record. Is that lacking in rap at the moment? Budden: Guys have a hard time expressing themselves, period. They feel they’re too manly and macho to cry. Now throw in the fact that you’re a rapper. Some people would rather not put their personal business on record, but I think people like that. People like it when Eminem drags his baby’s momma’s name through the mud. So I do it. The first time I did it was on “Thugs Cry.” People kept hearing me on freestyle after freestyle really talking about a whole lot of nothing. I didn’t wanna get the Can-i-bus syndrome where he killed every mix-tape and then the album came out and he couldn’t make a song to save his life. So I threw “Thugs Cry” out. The feedback was crazy. I do it because I know that’s what I can do. I’m not a fiction guy; I can’t differentiate my personal life with my professional one. VH1: In “Thugs Cry” you say “I’ve been in jail before.” How did that happen? Budden: There was a fight with my child’s mother, and I went to jail because the guy always goes to jail. Damn, I was young! I came home one day and all my stuff was outside in the rain, ruined. So I went upstairs and threw all her shit out the window. I didn’t touch her or anything. I drove off, and the cops pulled me over. They called my child’s mother and she walked up to where I was at with my child in her arms and pointed me out said, “That’s him, take him away.” And I went to jail. [Watch Clip] VH1: Did the same woman stab you, like you say on “Dear Angela?” Budden: That relationship was three years of near hell, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. She liked to throw stuff, and she threw a knife and it stuck. When you got that adrenalin going through your body you don’t even feel stuff like that. I grabbed her, and she said, “Stop!” I said “Why?” And I looked. She was a medic, so she did whatever she did and I lay down and the ambulance came and took me. She went to jail and I went to the hospital.[Watch Clip] VH1: How do you break onto the mix-tape circuit? Budden: I was trying to make a power move since I got out of rehab at eighteen. I was making music and it wasn’t the best - I was making it just to do it, while making freestyles on the side. Our plan was to attack every mix tape, whether we had to sell them independently or attract a major. Every single mixed tape that came out I put a different verse on. There’s a million mixed tape DJs and they come out with different ones every week, so for me to put a different verse here, different verse here was just like hustling. VH1: How do you know you’re a success at that level? Budden: Me and Fabolous did a freestyle and it went on a DJ Clue mixtape. That Clue tape was like the NBA finals. In Miami on Memorial Day weekend two years ago, almost every other car I heard that DJ Clue freestyle with me and Fab. I went back to my hood in Jersey City and I heard it. Everybody zeroed in. The other DJs were like, “If Clue’s playing him, I gotta play him.” Now everybody wanna play Joe Budden. VH1: You’ve talked about wanting to make the perfect rap album. What’s the standard that you’re hoping to achieve? Budden: Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die, Big Daddy Kane’s Warm It Up and Nas’ second album It Was Written were all perfect from start to finish. So was Eminem’s second album. I could go back: Eric B & Rakim’s Paid In Full, Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions. That album was perfect for me at that time. Hopefully mine will be able to get up there. VH1: Eminem’s is the most recent record that you named. Is there a golden age of hip hop that you look back to? Budden: 1994 was perfect for music. There were many new artists that changed everything, like Biggie, Nas and Snoop. Now fans are hip to the notion that rap albums are two singles and the rest is trash. That’s why people aren’t selling as many units as they’re expected to. You can’t just have that one single. People have to like you and your music; people have to believe you. You’re not just getting by with one single. |
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