Last night, Daylyt caused quite the stir on social media when he suggested that Joe Budden was allegedly on some sort of TDE payroll. His comments were eventually scrubbed from the internet, but the damage was done. Subsequently, speculation spread that Budden was somehow paid to favor Kendrick during the beef with Drake back in 2024.
Overall, this is quite the allegation. After all, you would prefer that commentators are neutral parties. Sure, Budden has his biases, and he wears them on his sleeve. But getting paid to believe a certain narrative is certainly a betrayal of the audience. At this time, Budden has yet to respond to the allegations. Instead, DJ Akademiks has done it for him.
While on stream, Akademiks spoke about Kendrick Lamar's promo team. He notes that it isn't Lamar himself who handles that stuff. Instead, it is a man named Kojo, who has come up quite a bit in the Drake-UMG case.
Akademiks claims that he has worked with Kojo in the past on a range of rollouts for various artists. Prior to Kojo's transition to TDE, Ak claims he got paid handsomely for his work, and sees Kojo as a smooth operator in the music promotion space.
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DJ Akademiks Speaks On Joe Budden
Ak subsequently went on to say that he sees a scenario in which Kojo could have been paying Joe Budden. However, he doesn't really have the proof to say anything one way or the other. Instead, Ak simply feels as though it is a plausible theory given what he has gone through in the past.
The commentator then went on to say that Budden is making a bag right now off Patreon, and that he probably doesn't really need the extra money. Either way, it is clear that Akademiks could not help but engage himself in the same speculation loop as the rest of the internet.
In the coming days, it will be interesting to see whether or not Budden addresses any of this.
