Throughout his longtime music career, Jay-Z’s business ethic has elevated with each era. The OG has reached a new stage in life, where him hopping on track is mostly based on the bond or relationship, as previously reported by AfroTech.
“It’s mostly relationships,” he shared with Kevin Hart in a recent interview. “It’s mostly — it’s actually always been mostly relationships. Sometimes it’s talent and sometimes someone asks me to be on some.”
According to HYPEBEAST, Joe Budden has recently recalled when he requested him to appear on the “Pump It Up” Remix.
Jay-Z's Price For Joe Budden's Past Feature Request
In his interview with the Flip Da Script Podcast, the rapper and podcaster shared that Jay-Z’s team said it would be a whopping $250,000 for him to lay a verse on the 2003 hit. Being fairly a newbie in the game and in his early 20s, Budden was unaware of just how high features could go for.
“Listen, again, I’m super young in that moment,” he said, according to the outlet. “I wasn’t in the studio when [Jay and Budden’s A&R Skane] had the conversation. I knew that they had some type of relationship. It was a Just Blaze beat and I was green behind the ears. I just thought that it would get done. I didn’t know anything about the business and how things like that are supposed to go. That was par the course.”
The "Pump It Up" Rapper Considers It A Blessing
Although Budden couldn’t pay up the $250,000, he still considers it quite a high moment early on in his career.
“It was big to me because it was unattainable,” Budden said. “It was outside of my budget, but the blessing was that he gave a number.”
The Aftermath
During the aforementioned interview with Kevin Hart, Jay-Z also explained that he’s dished out “way more nos than yesses” and tries his best to be straight up with people.
While there’s no definite answer to what the reasoning was behind his feature price, he went on to release a freestyle over the beat following Budden’s drop.
