Joe Budden Responds To Cardi B Song: “The Girl Rapper Wave Is Over”

Joe Budden has declared that the era of women dominating rap is over. During a recent episode of The Joe Budden Podcast, Joe and the gang discussed Cardi B‘s latest effort, “Like What (Freestyle).” He expressed that the days of a new femcee picking up the microphone and going viral are “finished.” He excluded the likes of Rapsody, Flo Milli, and Latto in his assessment but stated that “the rest of them” need to rethink their game plans.

“Y’all ain’t gonna want to hear it from me, but the girl rapper wave is over. Just telling you what it is,” Budden began. “I’m just telling you what it is. I’m normally a few months ahead with this stuff. Sometimes a few months ahead… The girl rapper wave is fineto. [But] the cream rises to the top. So Latto shall remain. Flo Milli shall remain. Rapsody will always be there, but she really wasn’t a part of that. All of that ‘Go find a girl, send her to Columbia [Records], get it done, put her in the studio with f**king [Mike WiLL Made-It] or any one of them ni**as.’ All that planting the girl in the scene, getting the record and it taking off, that wave is over.”

“I think labels are looking at it like, ‘Very few of y’all are selling records, it’s too much work to get your coin back. We gotta do brand deals all over the world with y’all. Y’all are expensive, some of y’all are annoying, and none of these records are working,” he continued.

He then honed in on Cardi B. The former rapper claimed that Cardi was “scared” to drop her new album, which she has “been talking about since 2019.” Joe pleaded with Cardi to tell her fans “what she’s so scared of.” “Now let me get to Cardi B. Cardi B is afraid and I’m tired of just nobody saying it. Cardi B is scared to come out, it don’t take this long to come out.”

Joe Budden previously trashed Cardi’s “Bongos,” which features Megan Thee Stallion. While he praised Meg’s subsequent track, “Cobra” he insisted that “Bongos” was “mid bullsh*t.”

“You went over there and gave Cardi that mid, knowing you had this heat in your studio? That’s what she did! She went to Cardi’s studio with that congo bongo bullsh*t they both did and left like, ‘Gotcha, bi**h.’ And she was in there getting information too like, ‘You gon lead with this? This your first record? This is gonna rattle the clubs. I might even come right after you,’” he hypothesized before laughing.