Hip-Hop

08 Dec 2023

Nicki Minaj Drops ‘Pink Friday 2’: See the Best Fan Reactions

For Barbz around the world, today is a holiday. On Friday, Dec. 8, legions of Nicki Minaj fans made their way to Gag City to celebrate the release of the rapper’s highly anticipated Pink Friday 2. With the use of AI, fans created a virtual kingdom complete with local attractions inspired by different Minaj songs and lyrics; even Sexyy Red, Tyla and Spotify made the pilgrimage to Gag City.

Pink Friday 2 is Minaj’s long-awaited fifth studio album and the sequel to Pink Friday, her Billboard 200-topping 2010 debut album. The new 22-track set features collaborations with Drake, J. Cole, Lil Wayne, Skeng, Skillibeng, Lourdiz, Tate Kobang, Lil Uzi Vert, Future and Tasha Cobbs Leonard. Several of Minaj’s recent singles also appear on the tracklist, including “Red Ruby Da Sleeze,” “Last Time I Saw You,” and the Billboard Hot 100-topping “Super Freaky Girl.”

Nicki Minaj has earned 133 Hot 100 hits, three of which hit the summit. On the Billboard 200, the 2024 Grammy nominee has sent two titles to No. 1 — Pink Friday and 2012’s Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded — from six career entries, all of which hit the top 10.

Here are some of the best fan reactions to Pink Friday 2 (which coincides with Minaj’s 41st birthday!).

08 Dec 2023

Urban Outfitters Celebrates Nicki Minaj’s ‘Pink Friday 2’ With Exclusive T-Shirt: Shop Here

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

Nicki Minaj isn’t just celebrating her birthday this Friday (Dec. 8), she also dropped her long-awaited sequel album Pink Friday 2. Urban Outfitters is commemorating the special day with an exclusive T-shirt that’ll have you saying “Let Me Calm Down” once you get a peek at it.

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Consider this shirt the gift for music lovers (especially if they’re fans of Minaj) as it features a graphic of the rapper on the front inspired by the cover of her new album. The back is designed with the words “Pink Friday 2” in pink script that’ll have you channeling the vibes of her latest music.

To commemorate the highly anticipated LP, the clothing brand rolled out the pink carpet to launch their exclusive merch. In an Instagram video posted on Friday (Dec. 8) from Urban Outfitters, the storefront has been transformed with pink decor and smoke clouds marking the brand’s official drop of the graphic T-shirt and more.

“? Happy Pink Friday, Barbz! ?” the caption says.

Since this top is exclusive to Urban Outfitters that means you can shop it in stores or online. It’s not uncommon for fans of the “Moment 4 Life” singer to sell out her merchandise, so you won’t want to think too long over whether or not to snag one for you or the fellow Barbz in your life. Once it’s sold out there’s not guarantee that it’ll be restocked — and the last thing you want to see is “sold out” messaging under your desired size.

Keep reading to shop the top now.

white t-shirt with graphic of Nicki Minaj

Urban Outfitters

Nicki Minaj “Pink Friday 2” Tee

Channel your inner Minaj with a graphic T-shirt that shows off her latest album cover on a white background. It’s made from a cotton-jersey material with a ribbed crew neckline and regular fit that you can layer under your shackets, teddy coats, oversized leather jackets or just wear on its own tucked into your jeans or joggers.

For more product recommendations, check out our roundups of the best denim dresses, corset tops and platform boots.

08 Dec 2023

Frank Ocean Enthusiastically Dances to New Song Snippet in Recording Studio Video

In what amounts to a virtual avalanche of fresh tracks, Frank Ocean posted a second snippet of new music in as many months on Thursday (Dec. 7). The reveal of the untitled track came in a 24-second video posted on Ocean’s Instagram Story in which the elusive crooner danced with great enthusiasm to an untitled mid-tempo R&B jam booming out of the recording studio’s speakers.

The surprise drop came a month after Ocean sneaked out another snippet on his Story on Nov. 8, a minute-long, unnamed moody track on which he was heard crooning over a droning keyboard. Rocking an orange bucket hat, red jersey and jeans, Ocean flexes, bops his head and sways side-to-side in the new clip, clearly vibing out to the chill song, whose dreamy lyrics are hard to make out. It was preceded by another short video in which Ocean smiles as he lays on the floor and fools around on a synthesizer with a friend’s baby.

While the Story has expired, you can listen to a grab of the new song here.

In keeping with Ocean’s unpredictable vibe, the singer also offered up some other fresh, surprise goodies in his Story, pushing fans to his blonded site, where he’s offering up a new range of Blonded Radio soccer jerseys (which at press time had sold out) and $120 jacquard soccer shorts, as well as a new $65 vinyl version of his 2016 Blonde album.

Ocean had not released any new music since he surprise-dropped two singles, “Dear April” and “Cayendo” in 2020, which was followed by a never-released untitled nine-minute song on the Christmas special on his Apple Music 1 Blonded Radio show in December 2021. The singer’s last proper album was Blonde.

08 Dec 2023

Green Day, Reneé Rapp, Ludacris, Janelle Monae & More to Perform on 2024 ‘Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest’

The lineup for the Hollywood portion of the 2024 Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest was revealed on Thursday night (Dec. 7), and it is jam-packed with pop, hip-hop, R&B and rock stars. The list includes Green Day, Janelle Monae, Ludacris and Reneé Rapp, as well as “Barbie” band Aqua, Bebe Rexha, Coco Jones, Doechii and Ellie Goulding.

Other stars slated to anchor the West Coast portion of the broadcast include Loud Luxury, Nile Rodgers & Chic, Paul Russell and Two Friends.

Seacrest will co-host this year’s 52nd annual edition from New York with singer Rita Ora, with Emmy-winning TV personality Jeannie Mai lined up to co-host the Hollywood portion of the broadcast in the Pacific time zone. Ora and Mai take over from Liza Koshy and Ciara, who co-anchored the show for the past few years. Singer/TV presenter Dayanara Torres will return as a co-host in the Atlantic time zone from Puerto Rico in a Spanish language countdown from the Puerto Rico Convention Center at DISTRITO T-Mobile. This year’s edition will not feature a central time zone countdown from New Orleans for the first time since 2017.

Performers for the other time zones have not yet been announced. Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2024 will air on Dec. 31 live on ABC beginning at 9 p.m. ET, kicking off more than five-and-a-half hours of performances and special guests.

DCP is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a Penske Media Corporation (PMC) subsidiary and joint venture between PMC and Eldrige. PMC is the parent company of Billboard.)

See the West Coast lineup below.

07 Dec 2023

Nicki Minaj Drops Her Long-Awaited Sequel ‘Pink Friday 2’: Stream It Now

Thirteen years after releasing her debut album Pink Friday, Nicki Minaj has delivered the long-awaited sequel.

Throughout Pink Friday 2, Minaj barrels through her foes at full throttle, showcasing the same unflappable wit that has made her a rap icon, as proven by her song “Big Difference.” “Like my hunnids blue/ Bad bi–hes, yeah, I keep ’em by the two/ It’s a big difference between me and you/ I ain’t nothin’ like you, you, you or you.”

Collaborators on the project include Future (“Nicki Hendrix”), J. Cole (“Let Me Calm Down”), Lil Uzi Vert (“Everybody”) and gospel star Tasha Cobbs Leonard (“Blessings”).

Minaj previously released the album’s lone single “Last Time I Saw You” with a more pop-centric vibe. “It’s a song about guilt,” she told Vogue in her cover story last month. “And I don’t think people make a lot of music about the experience of guilt. But if you talk to any human being on earth about it, they would know exactly what you mean. That ‘I wish I had’ feeling. Once I wrote the hook, I started to think of people that I love and see every day and still take for granted. You know what I’m saying? So I hope the song does a good thing.”

Pink Friday 2 is Minaj’s first album since her 2018 effort Queen, which included singles such as “Good Form,” “Chun Li,” and “Bed” with Ariana Grande. Along with Grande, Queen had features from Lil Wayne, Future, The Weeknd, and more. The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 with 185,000 album-equivalent units. 

Stream Pink Friday 2 below. 

07 Dec 2023

Splice’s Year-End Data Reveals What Producers Are Into: Amapiano & Phonk Skyrocket, Trap Is Down

Music tech company Splice has partnered with Billboard to exclusively release key data about what sounds have trended among their usership over the last year. This is the first time the company has made their end-of-year data public.

Since its founding in 2013, Splice has offered music makers a constantly evolving sound library of millions of samples and loops for royalty-free use, ranging widely from kick drum to kopuz (a Turkish string lute) samples. Its sounds are widely used by producers of all sizes — from hobbyists in their bedrooms to the talents making Hot 100 hits with Justin Bieber, Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift and Travis Scott.

Splice has users in virtually every country around the world, but it is particularly popular in its top ten markets: U.S., U.K., Germany, Canada, France, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, Italy and India. 44% of its registered users identify as Gen Z.

To organize its ever-growing library, Splice uses a tagging system, adding genre and subgenre signifiers to help users find the sample they need. Some sounds have multiple genre tags. As the company’s creative director of Splice Sounds, Jay “Capsun” Pulman, explains, “when we have sample packs that are released that are tagged as K-pop, for instance, the vast majority of the time, they’ll be made by an artist, producer, or songwriter who is actively involved in K-pop in some way. They’re involved in that scene. The samples come out of the genre, as opposed to tagging every sound that could be used from Splice and made into K-pop.”

In sharing this data, Pulman, says the company can shine a light on the “very starting point of music making…It shows us the start point of where eventual trends bubble, even before getting to see [the trends] in mainstream hits.”

African Music

Most notably, downloads for sounds tagged as “amapiano,” a South African dance music genre often featuring log drums, are up 826% year-over-year. Its searches are up 309%, and it is trending in 17 cities. In Los Angeles, the highest trending city for the genre, its growth is up 1,003% year-over-year. It is also popular among Atlanta producers, surging 956% in the city this year.

According to Pulman, the discrepancy in downloads versus searches for amapiano suggests that users might not know to look up this nascent genre by name through their search bar. However, they’re still gravitating towards it when it’s featured in other ways on the site. On the Splice home page, the Splice team often creates groupings of sounds for different genres, moods and other categories to entice users to download sounds.

In the last year, African music has become popular on the Billboard charts as stars from the continent like Rema, Burna Boy, and Tems, crossed over into the American mainstream. “Calm Down” by Rema, with an assist from popstar Selena Gomez, peaked at No. 3 this year on the Hot 100 and even made the difficult move to No. 1 on the pop radio airplay chart for five straight weeks. In an acknowledgment of African music’s growth, Billboard launched a dedicated U.S. Afrobeats chart in association with Afro Nation, and Billboard reporters Heran Mamo and Dan Rys frequently cover the latest in the genre with their monthly roundup, Afrobeats Fresh Picks.

Amapiano’s growth on Splice represents the continued proliferation of African music globally. To further fuel growth in trending genres, Pulman says Splice’s Sounds team watches their data carefully and hires musicians native to those genres to amass more authentic samples for the platform to offer its users.

Meanwhile, sounds that are tagged as “afrobeats” or “afropop” have declined by 45%, particularly in African metropolises like Lagos, Nigera. Splice believes this is because “users want authentic sounds from more specific Afro genres rather than generic samples that fall under a larger umbrella.”

Hip-Hop / Rap

Hip-hop remains the most popular genre on Splice, accounting for 19% of total downloads. Still, the genre is down 11% from 2022. This may foreshadow continued difficulties for hip-hop music on the charts. This year was widely considered to be an especially stagnant year for the highly-streamed genre, and that was reflected on the Billboard charts: August 2023 marked a full year since a rap song had been No. 1 on the Hot 100 – the first time this has happened in 23 years.

Splice has found that downloads of trap sounds are down by 14% globally since last year, even in the genre’s birthplace of Atlanta, where those downloads fell by 20%. (Meanwhile, Atlanta saw a 50% growth in techno downloads, a 21% growth in dubstep, and a 20% growth in soul).

Still, 86% of Splice users downloaded a hip-hop sample in 2023, and 57% of Splice users told the company in a recent survey that hip-hop interests them most when searching for samples. Pulman adds that producers who are making hip-hop, for example, might use sounds tagged as other genres in eventually creating hip-hop songs.

Phonk

This year, Splice introduced a tag for phonk music, and so far, the genre has seen growth of 1,246% year-over-year to more than 1 million downloads since the tag first became available. (This percentage is available because Splice says it has retroactively applied the “phonk” tag to older sounds in its catalog, created prior to the tag). Phonk samples are trending primarily in cities like Los Angeles, Tokyo, Berlin, Chicago, and Seoul. The new genre, which sounds like slowed down Memphis rap samples set to lo-fi beats, is especially well-known among gamers and car enthusiasts who are passionate about “drifting.” It is often used by those communities to soundtrack their social media videos. While phonk still isn’t well-known among the general public, it’s gained a much wider reach this year, thanks in part to its inclusion on the latest Fast and Furious mixtape, which was released alongside the franchise’s 10th movie earlier this year.

Electronic / Dance

Dance music genres saw a comeback this year on Splice. The company says drum & bass was one of the fastest growing genres this year, ranking as the 10th most downloaded genre in 2023 with 85% growth year-over-year. Jersey Club, a fast-paced subgenre that fuses elements of house and rap, also saw major growth with a 178% increase in downloads year-over-year. It’s trending in Nashville and six other cities.

Sounds tagged as “U.K. garage” are trending in nine cities Pulman says that while “it’s a fairly niche genre, it has made its way into larger genres like K-pop, for instance.” It also made its mark on Western pop through the work of PinkPantheress.

Various subgenres of house are also growing in popularity on Splice. Downloads for house samples are up 27% overall, and searches for the genre are up 17%.

K-Pop

Sounds tagged as “K-pop” have declined 17.97% on Splice in 2023, but the company states that this “may not be indicative of the genre itself declining,” given that K-pop is an amalgamation of various influences spanning from U.K. garage to trap.

In Seoul, the epicenter of the K-pop industry, Splice has seen sounds from amapiano, phonk, Jersey club, Baltimore club, U.K. garage and big room house trend in the last year.

Latin

Despite breakout stars like Peso Pluma and Grupo Frontera hitting the charts this year, Splice has not seen a notable uptick in the use of regional Mexican samples, including the subgenres ranchera, norteño, banda and mariachi. Splice says this is likely because most regional Mexican music makers do not heavily rely on sampling.

Reggaeton sounds saw 23% growth in downloads year-over-year, making it the 29th most downloaded genre on the platform. Reggaeton’s top city on the platform is Los Angeles, where the genre grew 26% year-over-year.

Sounds tagged as “baile funk,” or “funk carioca,” has also grown this year by 107% globally. This is likely thanks to exposure on TikTok with viral hits like “Automotivo Bibi Fogosa” by Bibi Babydoll, Dj Brunin XM, and KZA Produções and “Tuburao Te Amo” by Dj LK da Escócia, Tchakabum and MC Ryan SP. Downloads for the genre have grown especially quickly in Sao Paulo (92%), Mumbai (179%), Tokyo (81%), and Guadalajara (888%).

Country

Country music is not considered a sample heavy genre, but it is still growing among Splice users. Over the last year, Splice saw downloads for sounds tagged as “country” grow by 67%, while searches are up 21%. This mirrors the genre’s growth on the Hot 100 this year as country hitmakers like Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs, Jason Aldean and Zach Bryan became mainstream stars.

07 Dec 2023

Nicki Minaj Activates Barb Alert System in ‘Pink Friday 2’ Teaser: ‘Approaching #GagCity’

Nicki Minaj issued an urgent Barb Alert on Wednesday night (Dec. 6), warning her ardent followers to prepare for the impact of her long-awaited fifth studio album, Pink Friday 2. The tease for the collection originally due out last month — but delayed to coincide with the MC’s 41st birthday on Friday (Dec. 8) — also featured the heads up: “Approaching #GagCity.”

The futuristic 26-second preview warned Barbz to “stand by for further information” and included a snippet of the as-yet-unreleased PF2 song “Big Difference,” in which she raps, “Like my hunnids blue/ Bad b–ches, yeah, I keep ’em by the two/ It’s a big difference between me and you/ I ain’t nothin’ like you, you, you, or you.”

In a previous post, Minaj leaned into the fantasy flight-themed tease, telling Barbz, “As we begin to prepare for landing, please make sure your tray tables are put back up & your seat belts are tightly fastened. The captain has activated the ‘no bathroom’ sign. If you look out the window, you’ll begin to see the beauty…clear waters, pink dolphins…#GagCity #PF2.”

The long wind-up to the release of the album and Nicki’s colorful “Gag City” descriptions have already inspired a wide range of candy-colored fan art, which you can check out here, and here and here.

Minaj was slated to perform at Monday’s (Dec. 4) iHeartRadio Jingle Ball in Chicago, but told Barbz she had to peel off the bill in order to focus on preparing for the PF2 release. Last week she issued the stark warning, “If you on my $h!t list, you will never EVER recover. The. Fkng. End.” She also promised that the album is a certified classic that is “just beyond anything I could have imagined” after earlier saying that it is “one of the greatest albums of ALL TIME.”

Pink Friday 2 is the follow-up to Minaj’s 2018 album, Queen.

Check out the PF2 teasers below.

05 Dec 2023

Sarz, Asake & Gunna Are Spreading ‘Happiness’ in New Collab, And It’s Coming Very Soon

Renowned producer Sarz has recruited fellow Nigerian hitmaker Asake and chart-topping Atlanta rapper Gunna for their “Happiness” collaboration, Billboard is exclusively announcing Tuesday (Dec. 5).

The single will be available on Friday, Dec. 8, via UnitedMasters, which partnered with Sarz earlier this year on his 1789 imprint in an effort to empower African artists and allow them to expand their music globally. Following his “Yo Fam!” single with Crayon and Skrillex, this joyful Afrobeats-meets-hip-hop anthem is the second single to arrive ahead of Sarz’s album, which is due in 2024. The song will also be accompanied by a colorful music video directed by Edgar Esteves, which Sarz teased by posting an Instagram photo Monday of the three artists on the video’s set.

“‘Happiness’ is special to me. From the moment I created the beat, I noticed how it made anyone I played it to really happy. I’m glad Asake and Gunna made my vision come to life,” Sarz said in a statement to Billboard.

Sarz (real name Osabuohien Osaretin) has produced records for some of the biggest African artists, such as Wizkid, Burna Boy and Tiwa Savage, and is responsible for spreading the Afrobeats sound to the U.S. and U.K. charts with hits like Drake, Wizkid and Kyla‘s “One Dance,” which became the most streamed song on Spotify in 2016, and Lojay and Sarz’s “Monalisa,” which went viral and got a Chris Brown remix in 2022.

Pre-save “Happiness” here.

04 Dec 2023

R&B/Hip-Hop Fresh Picks of the Week: Beyoncé, Flo Milli, BigXthaPlug, Antha Pantha & More

Did anything else happen in the past week besides the premiere of Beyoncé‘s Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé? The music icon’s latest concert documentary vogued to the top of the weekend box office with $21 million — the biggest opening for a film on this historically sleepy first weekend in December in 20 years. With a pair of star-studded (Taylor Swift! Lupita Nyong’o!) premieres in Los Angeles and London, Queen Bey dominated all things music last week.

Nonetheless, the hip-hop and R&B worlds had plenty happening outside of the Renaissance rush. Debates around who belongs on the “mixtape Mount Rushmore” dominated social media, while other conversations continue to deal with the barrage of high-profile lawsuits filed under New York State’s recently-expired Adult Survivors Act.

On the music side, Sexyy Red repackaged her breakout Hood Hottest Princess tape with a tracklist that doubled the size of the original, Lil Wayne joined forces with Shabba Ranks and Buju Banton for the lead single for the forthcoming Book of Clarence soundtrack and Usher commemorated the close of his Las Vegas residency with his appearance on the remix of Jung Kook‘s “Standing Next to You.”

With Fresh Picks, Billboard aims to highlight some of the best and most interesting new sounds across R&B and hip-hop. Get into these seven new picks and be sure to check out the rest of our recs in the Spotify playlist below.

Freshest Find: Antha Pantha feat. A$AP Ferg, “Catwalk”

Harlem native Antha Pantha unleashed her debut album, Feline Season, last week, with guest appearances from A$AP Ferg (twice!) and HuntDawgg. Ferg lent his talents to the album’s second track, “Catwalk,” an electric tribute to the late ’90s New York hip-hop. He interpolates DMX‘s iconic “meet me outside” chant from “Party Up,” and uses it to evoke the brash energy of the late rapper and his era of high-octane party-rocking crossover hip-hop hits. Antha Pantha skates across the track with the flirtatious charisma of classic-era Lil Kim, always tempered by her own comedic idiosyncrasies in her lyricism and tone. New York’s female rappers just keep on winning.

Beyoncé, “My House”

Would it be a Beyoncé film event if we didn’t get a new song? Just like the Queen’s winning cover of Frankie Beverly & Maze’s “Before I Let Go” accompanied her Homecoming documentary, “My House” arrives as Beyoncé’s bonus treat for the Renaissance doc. Equal parts marching band-infused dirty South trap and ballroom-ready house, “My House” is Beyoncé’s signature (and somewhat literal) take on house music. Between her animated vocal delivery and those ridiculously lush vocal stacks, the track is unmistakably Beyoncé despite featuring the singer at arguably her most experimental.

BigXthaPlug, “Back on My BS”

On Friday (Dec. 1), BigXthaPlug capped off his banner year with the release of a new EP titled The Biggest. “Back On My BS” opens the project with a swaggering combination of jazz brass and skittering bass. “The one who put all this together/ They gave me somethin’ good and I made that s–t better/ Turnt up the notch, my watch changed up the weather/ I’m bigger and better, shit bigger than ever,” he spits on the single-verse track. Between his charismatic cadence and Tony Coles’ smooth beat, “Back on My BS” is a knockout opening track.

Dee-1, “Lines Drawn”

Hip Hop 50 has been wracked with conversation regarding the current scope of the genre’s messaging, the state of hip-hop culture at large and the alleged precariousness of its current position in the music industry. Dee-1, a NOLA rapper, has been vocal about his opposition to the redundancy of mainstream contemporary rap and its glorification of violence. On his new track “Lines Drawn,” which will is presently exclusively available on Audiomack, Dee-1 demands more from both consumers and creators in hip-hop: “I said that glorifying murder in our music is bad/ Now people saying ‘Stop speaking up, we like to hear that!’/ If that’s your preference, that’s cool, but when you get on the defense/ That lemme know my spirit irritatin’ your demons,” he spits over a chugging trap-infused instrumental.

Flo Milli, “Never Lose Me”

The Alabmama rapper’s long-gestating “Never Lose Me” is finally here — and it was, in fact, worth the wait. A snippet of this song went viral on TikTok, amassing over 100,000 posts in just under two months. The new track, and latest taste of her forthcoming Fine Ho, Stay album, finds Flo delivering smooth, sultry bars over a sample of Babyface Ray & 42 Dugg‘s “Ron Artest.” “Yeah, he my man, he was never your type/ If you try me, ho, it’s on sight/ He totin’ the Uzi, but he actin’ real bougie/ I like to fight over d–k, ho, don’t get hit with the two-piece,” she spits over the synthy instrumental, using her sweet tone as a Trojan horse for hard-hitting barbs.

Tyla, “Truth or Dare”

As the newly Grammy-nominated South African breakout star continues to rides the waves of “Water” to new commercial heights around the world, she’s already racing to her forthcoming eponymous debut studio album. She released three strong new tracks last week (Dec. 1), including the sensual standout “Truth or Dare.” On the mellow new Afropop-infused track, Tyla employs a staccato delivery in the verses to glean the truth from a lover who got away, ultimately delivering subtle riffs and ear-candy harmonies in the chorus. “Truth or dare? Is it true you care?/ Now that you can see the love from everyone,” she croons.

Hillari, “Blind Then”

Backed by mournful acoustic guitar, rising Filipina-Norwegian artist Hillari spends “Blind Then” parsing the difficulties of prioritizing music over certain relationships in her life. “Wish I would’ve noticed I was/ Blind then, silenced/ But I never noticed you was/ Right there, beside me,” she sings. It’s a simple arrangement — mostly reliant on a soulful collage of guitar and drums — but it’s Hillari’s weighty voice that illuminates that simplicity. Each quiver of her vibrato rings with the doubt, frustration and yearning she describes in her lyrics.

04 Dec 2023

YoungBoy Never Broke Again Thrashes Joe Budden After Recent Criticism: ‘I Don’t Play That S–t’

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Joe Budden, it’s that he isn’t shy about mincing words when it comes to his feelings about today’s hip-hop stars, as proven by his viral spat with Drake earlier this fall. On the latest episode of The Joe Budden Podcast, Budden took aim at Young Boy Never Broke Again, discrediting his merit as a superstar.

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“That n—a is trash, he’s horrible. He is really bad,” Budden said. “That thing happened with him where when he was out, the label pushed the button and did some YouTube sh-t, so all the little kids had to come to the gathering and tell you about how great he is and how many views he has and all of that. Now that the label is backed up, we got three to four of those projects while he’s been in Utah on house arrest.”

YoungBoy barked back with a vicious diatribe of his own. “The last thing I dropped was Decided 2, and my album is still in the top 10 [on Apple Music] p—y ass n—a,” he said on Instagram. “Don’t speak on me, I don’t play that s–t. Don’t rat on me either, you pu–y ass bi–h.” 

He later invited Budden to have a proper sit-down with him in Utah, where he’s currently on house arrest. “You stupid dumb b–h, your d–k don’t even get hard no more clown ass n—a. Ain’t no sabotaging me, b—h. F–k wrong with that n—a, man. Don’t rat on me b—h. And I don’t want to argue with your b–h ass. B–ch you do all them interviews, come on Grave Digger Mountain and talk to me n—a, if you can’t do that you bi–h made shut your f–king mouth.”

Later, YoungBoy’s advocate, Birdman, joined the fray and sent warning shots to Budden, urging him to stop “f–kin with something you should leave alone.” YoungBoy is currently under house arrest in Salt Lake City tied to a 2020 arrest in Los Angeles tied to gun and drug charges.

As previously mentioned, Budden was embroiled in a verbal skirmish with Drake last October, after he dubbed For All The Dogs a lackluster album. That resulted in Drake firing shots his way on tracks and on social media.

“@joebudden you have failed at music,” Drake began his lengthy message. “You left it behind to do what you are doing in this clip cause this is what actually pays your bills. For any artist watching this just remember you are watching a failure give their opinion on his idea of a recipe for success… a quitter give their opinion on how to achieve longevity…”

Listen to the Yb and Budden’s exchange below.