Yet another war of words has broken out between Jay Electronica and one of his more prominent critics. After going tweet-for-tweet with Peter Rosenberg, another popular rap pundit rubbed Jay Electra the wrong way when Joe Budden commented on A Written Testimony on his podcast. When Jay pointed out his displeasure to Budden’s co-host Rory, the former rapper was quick to spark a back-and-forth about the quality of the recently-released album.
It all started when Joe voiced the opinion to his podcast coworkers that he thought Jay Electronica adding so many Jay-Z verses was a “mistake.” In Joe’s view, “[Jay Electronica] got smacked around [by Jay-Z].” While admitting that his opinion was “hate,” Joe added that it was “rapper hate,” because “when y’all move the goalpost, as a rapper, I see it. For the last decade, y’all have mentioned Jay Elec with Hov. And Jay Elec positions himself that way on arguably one of the greatest tracks ever on ‘Exhibit C.’ That is God level rhyming.”
However, he didn’t feel Jay Electronica lived up to that expectation on his new album. In fact, he told his co-hosts, “I hate this album. F*ck what y’all talking ’bout. I hate it. Hate is my underwhelmed. For me to say I’m underwhelmed, I didn’t go into it expecting anything.”
The comments naturally became a topic of conversation on Twitter — as Joe intended them to, because he’s a professional troll at this point — leaving one fan to question: “Joe Budden hasn’t dropped a classic in his life and he’s critiquing Jay Electronica and Hov?” Jay Electronica clearly does a lot of name-searching, because he spotted the tweet and reposted it, tagging Budden co-host Rory and responding with a video of DaBaby going, “F*ck it.”
https://twitter.com/JayElectronica/status/1239767558141513729
Unfortunately for Jay, Budden actually follows him and seeing the tweet, decided to fire back. “I never got absolutely mopped around on my own project either… @ me, not Rory,” he sniped. This led to a response from Jay that, “i never heard your albums bro. may Allah bless your career as a journalist.” While calling Joe a “journalist” is a stretch (and personally insulting to my profession, to be quite honest), Joe, who never let anyone have the last word in his life, shot back, “I took you off yours & it’s a Hov mixtape now… Peace be unto you as well King.”
I never got absolutely mopped around on my own project either… @ me, not Rory. https://t.co/SfMRZ4BaVR
— Joe Budden (@JoeBudden) March 17, 2020
https://twitter.com/JayElectronica/status/1239919297838764035
I took you off yours & it’s a Hov mixtape now… Peace be unto you as well King. https://t.co/6KMlXKNqpP
— Joe Budden (@JoeBudden) March 17, 2020
While it seems pretty unlikely that things will escalate from there, what with both men being able to contact each other by phone, it would be fun to get a battle rapping Joe again. But his pivot to podcast largely absolved him of having to actually back up any of his mockery and in any case, both Jay and Joe seem to be doing pretty well off the album either way, as Jay pointed out later. “Make sure yall give me my credit for lighting up that next podcast episode too,” he signed off. “#DrakeIsMySpiritAnimal”
https://twitter.com/JayElectronica/status/1239923943638618113
Check out the two rappers Twitter war above and listen to A Written Testimony here.
