Money · Curated interview
Joe Budden's real power move? Ownership.
He owned his mistakes. Then he owned his future.
With Joe Budden, founder of the Joe Budden Network
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Picture it: you're 21. The demo tape you gave your god brother has been passed from hand to hand, friend of a friend of a friend, all the way to the top of Def Jam. Now you're signed, on the same label as some of the biggest names in rap, with an advance in your pocket.
That was Joe Budden in the early 2000s. In this conversation on Yahoo Finance's Built Different, with his manager and business partner Ian, he looks back at everything that came after. As Joe puts it, he fails up. And the thread running through every one of those comebacks is ownership.
Signed young, spent fast
The advance was supposed to carry him until his album came out, which ended up taking about two years. It didn't make it that far. There was jewelry, and a truck. A Hummer, to be exact.
We've all had a check disappear faster than we planned. His just happened to come with a record deal attached.
So one day, without telling anyone, Joe Budden walked into a Def Jam executive's office and asked the question so many artists still wonder about: how are rappers actually making money? Because he wasn't. The answer was publishing. Artists were living off their publishing deals.
There was more he didn't know yet. He wasn't signed to Def Jam directly. He was signed to a production company, and the production company was signed to Def Jam. So before any money reached Joe, it had a few stops to make first. He'd signed that contract before he even knew what a production company was.
He doesn't tell it as a horror story, though. He's grateful for all of it. "All of the yesterdays get me to my today," he says. We love that line.
Getting hot on his own
Then Def Jam changed leadership. The people who signed him were gone, and the new team had no real plans for him. Nobody tells you that out loud, he says. You just feel it.
If you've ever felt a room go quiet on you, you know exactly what he means.
He wanted out, but his manager was honest with him: leave cold, and nobody's giving you a good deal. Go get hot first.
So he did, his own way. A mixtape usually meant rhyming over beats everyone already knew. Joe made his with all original music and called them mixtapes anyway.
There were no streaming platforms back then, so the streets were the distribution. His DJ, On Point, printed the CDs and shipped them out to his list, getting them into every borough in New York, and from there to other cities and states.
It worked. The mixtapes got him hot again, and they got him shows.
"My way doesn't work anymore"
By 2015, Joe had tried it every way he could think of: major labels, independent labels, digital labels, radio, even reality TV on Love & Hip Hop. That year, his longtime friend Parks, now his co-host on the podcast, introduced him to Ian, who would go on to manage him. Ian found Joe sitting alone in the corner of a hookah bar, and Joe told him the truth. His way didn't work anymore, and he wanted help finding a new one. Ian says he'd never seen that kind of vulnerability from a hip-hop artist.
Honestly, it might be our favorite moment in the whole interview. Saying "I need help" out loud takes more confidence than pretending you have it all figured out.
Not long after, on tour, Joe turned around from the front seat of the van, cigarette in hand, and said it out loud. Never again. It's over.
He meant rap. What he couldn't have known was that he was about to start the biggest chapter of his life.
Failing up
Every time it looked like the fall, it turned into the climb.
With Ian, he started Everyday Struggle, a show with Complex where he told the truth on camera four times a week. He says it felt like dropping an album every time. It also came with something he'd never had before: a guaranteed check every month. To Joe, that felt like hitting the lotto. He'd still call Ian every month to ask if the money had hit.
But when it was time to renegotiate, Complex didn't value the show the way he did. So he said no.
Then came the call from Spotify. Ian remembers sitting in an old car in the pouring rain, both of them broke, when Spotify asked them to put The Joe Budden Podcast up for free. They said no, not without real business on the table. The next day they were on a plane, and that meeting became, as they tell it, Spotify's first exclusive podcast deal. Joe's victory lap? He started buying trench coats and walking different.
When the Spotify deal ended in 2020, there was more money on the table than either of them had ever seen. The catch: taking it meant giving up control of the show's advertising and distribution. So they passed. They took the show straight to fans on Patreon with no guaranteed money, and came away with something they valued more than a check: a small piece of the company.
This time, he owned it. Today, the Joe Budden Network is a multimillion-dollar independent media network, and he owns it.
And if ownership isn't offered, he isn't afraid to ask. He's honest that it comes with responsibility, too. He's put well over 100,000 hours into his craft, plenty of them alone in a room, recording himself on a computer.
What keeps him going is bigger than money. He never wants to wake up unhappy in a deal he's in. And someday, when his daughter decides to make content of her own, he wants to have been part of the reason the game looks the way it does.
Joe says he sees a lot of people in media today who are afraid to dream as big as they possibly can. He has never been one of them.
Your turn
Imagine owning all of it. Your part, your story, your dreams, the person you're becoming, even the chapters you'd write differently. It's your life, and it's yours to write.
Imagine a stumble that turns out to be the way up. It happens more than you'd think. Some of the best chapters start right where it looked like everything fell apart.
And picture the ladder, one step at a time. Joe's career didn't jump. One thing led to another, then another, because he showed up for each one and brought in the right people when it was time. You might trip on a step or two. That's part of the climb.
You don't have to see the whole ladder today. Maybe it's just the first step. Take it, and make it yours. Dream big. Then own it.
Key moments
- The demo tape that made its way to Def Jam.
- The advance, and how fast it went.
- "How are rappers making money?"
- Finding out what a production company is.
- Leave cold and you won't get a good deal. Go get hot.
- Mixtapes made of all original music.
- The DJ with the list: how the mixtapes got out.
- The hookah bar: "My way doesn't work anymore."
- The tour van: never again.
- Starting Everyday Struggle with Complex.
- The Spotify call, in an old car in the pouring rain.
- Trench coats, and walking different.
- Patreon: a piece of the company instead of a guarantee.
- Bigger than money: what he wants to leave behind.