Joe Budden Says He Probably Won't Relisten to Latest Kendrick Lamar Song, Compares It to "6:16 in LA"
Lamar abruptly dropped his presumably titled "The Day The Party Died" on Wednesday just moments before the MTV Video Music Awards.
Joe Budden says he loves Kendrick Lamar’s latest release but probably won’t be revisiting the track again.
Budden’s comments arrived on the latest episode of his Joe Budden Podcast published on Sunday, just days after Lamar surprise-released the presumably titled “The Day The Party Died” to his Instagram account.
The track dropped just moments before the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards began its broadcast and days after he was announced to headline the 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show in New Orleans.
Although the elusive 37-year-old rapper has not offered any analysis on “Day the Party Died,” it’s widely presumed that K.Dot is speaking on the musical landscape and, by other interpretations, a shot at Drake’s lyrical content.
“I absolutely love it and I'm probably not going back to it much,” said Budden about the track at the 1:08:54 mark in the video linked above. “I feel like this was an extension of ‘6:16 in LA’ for me. I feel like if you hated in 6:16 L.A., then you don't have a chance with this.”
The 44-year-old podcaster commended K.Dot’s latest effort for its tempo and intensity while noting that artists who get “super lyrical,” such as Nas, are opting to choose beats that highlight their vocals.
“Historically, we get Preacher Kendrick before [Michael K.] Williams in The Wire comes out. Before we see Omar, we get preacher time. He normally leads y'all with some type of message, some preachy rappity rap, ‘I want better for my people,’ untitled album-ish type of shit, and then heads start to roll,” Budden added.
The “Pump it Up” rapper also said that he had been trying for several days “to piece together” the muted line in “Day the Party Died.”
“I feel like direct names were said and killed, and ‘I can't do that. So bleep that out.’ Other than that, I don't think we would get a bleep from him,” he said.
Budden conceded that the song is intended to go “back to the core” for the audiences Kendrick gained amid his rap war with Drake earlier this year and, more specifically, “Not Like Us.” He also likened the track to “the 30 minutes that the pastor does at a Black church after the climax and the organs stop.”
Despite the podcast’s co-hosts debating Kendrick’s choice to drop the song abruptly amid the MTV Video Music Awards, noting that the rapper tends to be very intentional with his choices, Budden apparently disagrees.
“I don't think it's that deep this time, only because we have our Super Bowl announcement. So now we can reverse engineer as consumers. The Super Bowl is in February, September is moving fast,” Budden said.
He continued, “So let's say his team, his trusted team, is starting with October. We already know that they got a record that they're gonna put a lot of money behind. because I heard a piece of it in front of that ‘Not Like Us’ shit. You would be a fool to not put money behind that record.”
“You gotta think that you'll give that record 4 to 6 weeks to try to get some type of momentum going before the Super Bowl, right? So now at this point, ‘I can tease, I can play, I also still have “Not Like Us” as a top five record. I don't wanna drop anything that might disturb that still. Not yet, not until we are ready with our next record and our next campaign,’” he added
Kendrick Lamar will perform at the 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show on Sunday, February 9, when it touches down in New Orleans, Louisiana. Several heavyweights in the hip-hop space including Nicki Minaj, Birdman, Master P, Cam’ron and Mase, as well as Boosie Badass have all spoken out that Lil Wayne, a New Orleans native, should perform instead.
