Okay bare with me. I know this is long. I am a very all or nothing person and sometimes when I get to writing I can't stop lolll
But basically if you are not familiar with the Joe Budden Podcast it was basically created by Joe about 7 years ago with the help of Peter Rosenburg and some other individuals. Peter helped with production and got Joe a studio for free. Which later Peter got screwed over by Joe like a lot of other ppl and Peter expressed how hurt he was cuz he really tried to help Joe.
Anyway at the beginning of the podcast Joe went through a number of hosts before finding Rory and Mal and keeping them.
Well tbh Rory was involved with the podcast from day one whether it was behind the scenes and or actually podcasting. Even though later Joe will try to convince people that Rory wasn't that involved which is bullshit.
Mal used to be Joe's roommate when Joe was broke and renting a mansion he could not afford (he landed up having to vacate and still owes the landlord money FYI) and while Joe was trying to get the pod going and going through different hosts he calls up Mal who he hasn't spoken to in a while and asks him to be on the podcast. This is around episode 70 something but keep in mind the podcast did not jump off yet and was low key. It did not start jumping off until Mal joined. The three of them had good dynamic and keep in mind Mal brother is Jay Z's buddy. He helped Jay create his label back in the day so Mal and his family are SUPER connected. So that also brought in a lot of guests to the show which in hind sight Joe was very jealous of. And keep in mind both Rory and Mal had jobs/money before this podcast. Mal had even more money than Joe (again he is connected and has his "businesses") he just is a chill dude who moves quietly so you don't see him screaming about his money like Joe
So anyway that are the three hosts they land; Joe, Mal and Rory. And they have this weird dude named Parks behind the scenes who basically continues to suck off Joe and no one really likes likes.
And keep in mind the common theme to Joe's podcast is that CREATORS DESERVE RESPECT!! READ YOUR CONTRACTS ARTISTS!!!!! CREATORS NEED THE NUMBERS!!!! FUCK THE MAN WE INDEPENDENT!!!" Every other podcast was just Joe screaming about he is a God and knows what he is doing and is a genius lol.
So cue the Spotify deal. They get the deal by basically calling them (which hey more power to you tbh - hustle) and they give them a decent deal. Pod is doing well (while defaming Em's name - this was around the Kamikaze/revivial era) but yeah peak season for them. They are touring and they have a great fan base. Though Joe makes it clear that he think that the reason the have such a strong fanbase but as you see later Mal points out that he went on tour with Joe when he was rapper he basically no one was coming lol- people liked the DYNAMIC of the podcast which included Mal and Rory thats why people were coming then- not because of ur sorry rap career.
So towards the end of their contract Joe goes to Spotify to discuss renegotiations. Spotify gives him a number and Joe is DISGRACED by it!! HORRENDOUS HOW DARE THEYYYYYYY!
So he turns it down and his team are loyal and make no issues with it. So Spotify comes back and then offers them 30 MILLION DOLLARS!!! Keep in mind Spotify just signed Joe Rogan - who makes Joe's views look like dog shit lol and they offered him 100 million. If that was me I would have taken my money and run and saved it to build my network and pay my staff. Welp Joe turns that down aggressively and publicly/disrespectfully and has the audacity he is waiting for another offer and of course Spotify is like lol no....
So even through all of this the podcast is still riding with Joe but the fans are starting to look at Joe differently but Mal and Rory still back him. So they have NO deal and Joe is becoming more emotionally abusive to both Mal and Rory (passive aggressive shots) and keeps saying that he is going to making their percentages into salaries soon which is not what they agreed upon. Their contract is based on percentages with Joe getting the most (which no one had a problem with mind you) so Joe was already scheming to screw them over.
So basically fans continued to witness the manipulation, the narcissism and passive aggressive/abuse Joe inflicted on both Rory and Mal (mostly Rory - probably because he is the youngest -31 I think and Mal has the most connects aka Jay Z)...I can go into this in detail but this is long enough but Joe is basically just a horrible person and fans are starting to look at the situation differently.
So THEN Joe joins patreon without telling Mal or Rory and gets a bullshit title of "head of creator equity' at patreon which it is obvious the owner of patreon is just using Joe and the podcast as a commercial for patreon lolll. So Joes HEAD is HUGEEEE! He is acting like he created podcasting and is Steve Jobs (he legit compares himself to Steve Jobs, Martin Luther king, and Jeff Bezos lolll) and so he has these ridiculous tiers for patreon (like 25 dollars a month) for shitty content. And HERES THE WORST PART. Rory and Mal find out about it ON AIR....so they had no idea until they shot the podcast. This is when tensions continued to rise. Also keep in mind Rory offered to give his patreon check to the staff f the podcast because all of them were overworked and underpaid including Parks who still sucks joe's dick and Joe called Rory the next morning SCREAMING at him that he was ungrateful and a horrible person...which like wtf?? Dude was trying to help
So going forward Joe continues to disrespect Rory (who I actually like tbh - he is fiesty but still a good guy imo) and finally Joe told Rory to take some time off and Mal found out and basically long story short was like HELLLLL NOOOOO and to the surprise of Joe took Rory's side because Mal saw he was treating Rory and also everything else that was going behind the scenes that you will see later. So Rory and Mal both boycotted for over a month.
Well while they were gone Joe did his damndest to make Joe and Rory look like the bad guys and tried to prove that they were replaceable but it did not work out tbh. Finally after a long good conversation (from Mal and Rorys mouth) they came back for one episode even though tensions were REALLLLLLY bad. But it lasted one episode and when they did not come back Joe FREAKED on air and fired both Rory and Mal on air. And spewed a bunch of lies and disrespect. Welp this backfires on him quick.I think he was expecting the same reaction from fans when he went on his Spotify rant but nope fans went off on Joe because they don't just like Joe they like the group dynamic.
So Joe tries to do damage control when his rant and temper tantrum back fired on him and the tried to get a paid therapist on his show to justify his actions and gives a half ass apology to Rory on air. People don't really pay attention to it tbh and don't buy and basically make memes off of it. Then the next day Rory and Mal give their response and OMG!!! Please just watch it tbh but I stole the cliff notes from Reddit (but please watch it - plus their production is ten times better than the shitty production on Joe's podcast lol)
1. Rory & Mal are on a percentage based contract that gives them a split of any deals that take place as opposed to a salary as Joe made it seem. Because of how the deal is set up, they need accurate accounting to know how much they actually stand to make.
2. The accounting that they've been receiving over the years has been through "email subject lines," and excel sheets which isn't actual accounting, and whenever they asked for it Joe would get very defensive and at multiple points screamed at/cursed rory out on the phone.
3. In late 2019, they got an actual accounting for (probably) the year, and it had a $400,000 "mistake," on it which had been sent to them by Wealth Management the company who presumably does Joe's finances/the pod's.
4. Rory noticed the mistake, sent it back and the company agreed they made the mistake. Rory & Mal never received updated accounting, and have not received legitimate accounting since.
5. Joe has handled all the negotiating of deals on behalf of the pod, (which is fine because he owns the IP), but since he combines some of his personal deals with the pod (pull up cash app deal, patreon, etc) it can be hard to figure out what their splits are on stuff - especially because he won't give them legit accounting & he gets extremely defensive when they ask questions.
6. Mal recalls an unreleased Pull up with Crooked I where he remembers Crooked I telling Joe that they should just finish out and honor their contracts to which joe responded "fuck that, I don't honor contracts."
7. Mal also replies to the suggestion that he lived off of Joe from the last pod - "Mal lived WITH ME." He claims that Mal may have even had more money than Joe when they met, he always hustled, and even hooked up shows, performances, or verses for Joe to get him a bag when he could.
8. Mal & Rory found out about the Patreon deal on air.
9. The guys get paid off a percentage after expenses. They never asked for a higher percentage, they simply wanted access to the quarterly accounting they're entitled to in their contracts so they could determine if the numbers were adding up or not.
10. No one accused Joe of stealing but when they asked for the accounting Joe would BLOW up at Rory like screaming blow up
11. Their spidey senses tingled when they were making the same amount of money off live shows even when the numbers went up.
12. Rory and Mal brought deals and opportunities to the pod, specifically Tidal. To add on: Rory brought up a Tidal deal. Joe yells at him. A bit later, Joe presents to them the exact same Tidal deal.
13. Mal was always getting money and may have had more money than Joe at certain times during his failing rap career. He was never a bum that Joe tried to portray
14. Joe told everyone to go to their respective corners, including himself, until things calmed down but instead he released multiple pods with replacements, further igniting the flames.
15. Rory tried to mediate the situation between Joe and Mal.
16. Rory never sent angry emails and none of his legal ever did.
17. Mal and Rory admit to allowing Joe to drag the accounting request out due to trusting Joe in good faith, which they admit they should've nipped in the bud much earlier.
18. Joe isn't the person they used to know and his ego has always been big but now its HUGE
19. Rory wanted to give his patreon check to the underpaid overworked staff and Joe again cussed him out and screamed at him
So basically Joe was hiding a 400K accounting "mistake" lol
Joe tried to do damage control on instragam live saying things like "my brothers are hurting and confused!!!" but no one is really here for it. His stans basically jumped ship quick and hard.
And to add to all of this Olivia Pope who used to be on a podcast under the Joe Budden Network (and I use Network loosely) came out today and explained why she quit out of the blue a while back. She basically confirmed rumors that Joe sexually harassed her constantly and would do things like "hump" her when hugging her. Go to her instagram if you want to hear the whole thing. It's horrible.
Y'all there is SO SO SO much more to this. I am missing a bunch but it really is like trying to explain the entire series of Lost to someone who did not see an episode. But I will leave it as this. Joe Budden is NOT a good person. He's worst than Royce (which is saying something). He takes every opportunity and destroys while playing the victim and making out everyone out to be the villain. Please go over to the Joe Budden Podcast Reddit...because 1) it's hilarious 2) it will give you insight to the mind of Joe.
Also keep in mind these were DIE hard fans of the podcast for years- mostly men. It would be like all of us all of a sudden stop stanning Eminem and making this site an entire hate site. Even his famous meme account that Joe shouted out said they will no longer support Joe (all the Joe budden fans followed it).
And this is why I am so scared that Royce/Denaun will get Em involved with Joe again. Joe is on his LAST leg dude. He burnt so may connections and so many opportunities that most people would kill for and spat and everyones face and then cried victim and mental health. He cherry picks things people say or even setting them up to say it to use it in the future to justify his action (I have multiple examples of this but give me a break lol- I can post them later if ppl are into psychology stuff like I am lol). CLASSIC NARCISSISM. And when someone like this is backed into a corner like this they will grasp at any straws and with Royce impacting Em's career like we think I can see Royce convincing denaun to back up Joe (that's how they signed SH in the first place! Biz said he felt so bad about the SH/Joe thing because D12 cosigned Royce and Joe when Em was super super hesitate signing them). I am scared it will happen again and tug at EM's heart strings. Because no one is going to help Joe now except Royce and Denaun. And he will try to destroy Em again. This comment from Mal and Rory's response explains Joe in a nutshell:
A lot of people fear failure. But Joe is the type of person who fears success. He's a textbook Narcissist. He's only comfortable when he's the victim, so he intentionally destroys ALL good situations he's in to extract whatever cheap sympathy he can. His relationships with women, his relationships with his children, his music career successes, his media successes. 100% of the time, seemingly at the worst time possible, he goes out of his way to wreck whatever good thing he's involved in.
Anyway I know its a lot but trust me I left out a lot. I promise you just go to the reddit sub. You will see how ridiculous Joe is. He is like a movie villain from a soap opera. It is unbelievable.
So he turns it down and his team are loyal and make no issues with it. So Spotify comes back and then offers them 30 MILLION DOLLARS!!! Keep in mind Spotify just signed Joe Rogan - who makes Joe's views look like dog shit lol and they offered him 100 million. If that was me I would have taken my money and run and saved it to build my network and pay my staff. Welp Joe turns that down aggressively and publicly/disrespectfully and has the audacity he is waiting for another offer and of course Spotify is like lol no....
