Joey Bada$$ been trending lately with his rap challenge to Kendrick Lamar and West Coast Hip-Hop. After dropping a buzzing freestlyle with Big Sean and Ab-Soul for Red Bull, Joey sits down with journalist Will Lavin to discuss his past ties with Best Rapper Alive, Jay-Z.
When asked about his days grinding it out in hip-hop, Joey remembers almost signing to Jay-Z Roc Nation imprint. Excited by the offer, Joey would decline as he wanted to take a different route. " I didn’t necessarily opt to go the indie route; it was a chain of communication that I didn’t have any part in," He tells Will. "You gotta understand, at that point I’m a 17-year-old kid from Brooklyn, that was the dream, the highest honor you can have. Jay is my favorite rapper, even to this day, and within a year of being in the game he wanted to sign me. But he didn’t want to sign me as an artist, he wanted to manage me. I had a manager at the time and I always wonder if that’s how it got botched."
Joey Bada$$ would eventually sign to Roc Nation in 2010 but acting would quickly overtake his original passion. Joey originally spoke on declining Jay-Z offer with DJ Whoo Kid. In a 2016 interview on SiriusXM’s Shade 45, he recounted reading Decoded, Jay-Z’s 2010 memoir.
One passage struck him: Jay sitting across from Russell Simmons at Def Jam, thinking, “I don’t wanna be signed to this n***. I wanna be this n****.”* Joey said that sentiment resonated deeply. “I kinda had that same perspective,” he said. “But shoutout to Jay, because he was on it before most.”
Joey Bada$$ The Ruler's Back
IRobot made Bada$$ a sought-after actor, but it was his character Unique in Power that has defined him. Joey spoke highly of 50 Cent, who serves as executive producer of Power Book III: Raising Kanan. Joey respects 50 Cent's complexity..
“He’s much smarter than people might think,” he said. “Very multidimensional. He reminds me of myself—how he thinks, how he moves. It was dope to spend time with him and understand where his mind’s at.”
Joey Bada$$ continues to chart his own path, balancing a rap career with an expanding presence in film and television. But the weight of his early brushes with greatness—whether at a Roc Nation meeting or on a TV set with 50 Cent—still lingers.
