Joe Budden Rips DJ Akademiks Over The Tupac Tapes: “You Just Being Willfully Obtuse”
The Everyday Struggle reunion nobody asked for is playing out in real time — and Joe Budden is not letting DJ Akademiks get his take off unanswered.
On The Joe Budden Podcast, Budden went directly at his former co-host over Ak’s criticism of The Tupac Tapes with Angie Martinez, the upcoming Netflix series built around Martinez’s never-fully-aired 1996 interview with Tupac Shakur. Budden’s verdict was short and sharp: “You just being willfully obtuse.”
Budden and his co-hosts also called the reaction hypocritical — pointing out that the same voices now questioning Martinez built their platforms covering street beef and rap feuds for years.
Ak’s argument, laid out earlier this week, is that hip-hop media runs a double standard: he, DJ Vlad and Adam22 get accused of “inciting violence” with their coverage, while Martinez is being celebrated for releasing an interview she deliberately sat on for three decades. Ak also revealed he is holding an NBA YoungBoy interview that YoungBoy asked him to release only after he dies — and said he does not want to think about that.
The backstory matters here. Martinez interviewed Tupac in 1996, three months before his death, and the full conversation never aired because she feared Pac’s comments about his feuds could put him and other people in danger. Thirty years later, the tapes are finally coming out as a four-part Netflix video podcast premiering November 27 — with a panel of guests helping unpack them that includes Charlamagne Tha God and Joe Budden himself.
That last part is the layer Ak’s critics keep circling: Budden is part of the very project Ak is questioning, which makes this less a neutral media debate and more the latest round in a feud that has been running since the two shared the Everyday Struggle desk at Complex in 2017. The two have traded jabs repeatedly this year, and this one is not cooling down before the premiere.
So who has the point — is releasing the tapes history, or is Ak right that the rules change depending on who is holding the mic?
Source: Joe Budden’s comments on The Joe Budden Podcast; series details from Netflix. Photos: The Joe Budden Podcast / DJ Akademiks.
