Source: Johnny Nunez/Sean Drakes / Getty
On Saturday’s airing of The Joe Budden Podcast with Rory & Mal, the “Leftover Lust” episode, Joe Budden made a comment about women who get excited to take part in Carnival and Carnival-inspired festivities. He said they can’t wait to put on the feathery, colorful and admittedly minimalist costumes so they can “be hoes.” When word got out about what he said, the criticism was pretty swift and passionate.
It all started when one of the co-hosts, Rory, said that TLC member Chilli was his first crush. Chilli, Lil Kim and Mya were recently seen hanging out in Trinidad for Carnival while filming their upcoming VH1 show Girls Crew. Ashanti was also there.
After the crush admission, Budden asked, “What’s up with Mya?” It was pointed out by Rory that Mya was “doing that little Carnival sh-t. She looked aight,” to which Budden responded while laughing, “These chicks can’t wait to put on these Carnival outfits and be hoes.”
It was totally out of left field. Budden was called out for never actually going to Carnival by his friends/co-hosts, and was hit with responses that included everything from “And what are you saying?” to “You mad?” and “I have yet to see a problem.”
That was the extent of the conversation between the men on that topic. If you don’t believe us, just know we listened to the entirety of episode 228 to get to that part for context purposes. There was really no context.
You can find his comments at the 128:00 mark on the Spotify podcast, or at the 2:04 mark on the YouTube video below if you wish to hear it for yourself:
Despite his comment just being random and some serious slut-shaming, Budden claimed people got what he said all wrong. When pushback became intense on social media, the 38-year-old retired rapper issued something of an apology while maintaining that his comment was part of a bigger discussion that people distorted to use against him (maybe they edit these really long podcasts, but we didn’t hear a bigger convo).
“On my most recent podcast we were having a conversation about ‘other’ ppl appropriating Culture they weren’t apart of (as we normally do). We were not discussing Carnival, Caribbean Culture or anything of the sort and never would as I’m well aware of the strong and proud history & heritage,” he said in a now-deleted IG post. “To anyone who heard that conversation and felt offended I’d like to humbly apologize, that’s just never my intention. To those of you outraged by this 7 second clip of audio being matched w pictures of beautiful women to push a narrative we aren’t adding to let me say, I didn’t publish that, those are not my thoughts or sentiments and I don’t feel that way. I can assure you your anger is misplaced. That isn’t journalism, it’s cheap clickbait to weaponize emotions to push an agenda. It’s irresponsible and in extremely poor taste but bullsh-t spreads fast so this needed to be said (I LOVE me some US)…Again I apologize to anyone I may have offended, Salute to most of y’all that know what time it is w me fr & the rest of y’all can feel however you may, it’s your right. Peace & love.”
With that unconvincing apology, you can imagine that people are still peeved, Caribbean women in particular. Hit he flip to see the many passionate responses to his very clear and not misconstrued “These chicks can’t wait to put on these Carnival outfits and be hoes” comment:
