On the latest episode of the “Native Land Podcast,” Angela Rye addressed Joe Budden and apologized. Rye, and her cohosts, Tiffany Cross, Andrew Gillum, and Bakari Sellers spoke to Charlamagne Tha God about the framing of a previous episode that prompted Budden to respond on his own podcast.
“We should’ve titled it differently,” Rye said about the episode, which was originally called “Joe Budden and the Dumbing Down of America.”
According to Rye, Budden’s camp had the video taken down for copyright infringement for using a clip from his show, and now it’s been reposted with the title “Do We Need to Talk About Black Intellectualism?”
Budden, who hosts the “Joe Budden Podcast,” called out the “NLP” for using him as a peg during their episode on anti-intellectualism among Black Americans. On a previous podcast episode of Joe’s podcast, co-host Marc Lamont Hill ended up in a heated argument with another co-host, QueenzFlip. The two got in a screaming match and stood up to each other after QueenzFlip called Hill a “sucka.”
When reacting on the “NLP,” Rye said Budden and his podcast guests, aside from Hill, would not be welcome on her show, but questioned the idea of closing off discussions to people who were not “on the same level” as her or her podcast hosts.
“Of course, Marc is welcome anytime. I don’t know about the rest of them. But I will just say, you know, I don’t think that that means that we should be foreclosed to having discussions that are tough or where we don’t think people are our peers or we’re on the same level. I’m not into that,” Rye said.
Her cohosts also made comments insinuating an intellectual gap between Hill and QueenzFlip.
“I think Marc is there intentionally. I think Marc is there purposefully. I think that it adds to the dynamic. So I do think that there is an added value to having someone like Marc Lamont Hill being there,” Sellers said. “Guarantee you I know 10 Flips. I know one Marc Lamont Hill because that’s just the level of intellect. But I know 10 Flips, at minimum. And I think the way they were able to have that conversation, as cringe as it is, are conversations that happen more often than people actually think or they’re conversations that people want to have.”
Budden reacted to Rye on his show, calling out the fact that she and her co-hosts did not watch his podcast and were commenting on the nature of it. Then, he and his co-hosts talked about Rye’s comments about them not being “on the same level.”
“A lot of times in these political spaces, a lot of times in the spaces that are quote, unquote intellectual, we often look at demographics, and we look and pick and choose when we want to play victim and we want to play aggressor. So when the rich white people are doing certain things to us, we cry foul, and then we’ll take the same exact thing and now shun other people that are less than we are, or that we deem less than we are,” Ish, a Joe Budden Podcast co-host, added.
After Budden’s response, plus the ensuing social media debate, Rye issued a direct apology on this latest episode with Charlamagne.
“I think what we did was wrong and I do want to apologize to Joe Budden’s podcast, to their team, to their production company for that title. I’m an EP on this show, and so I own that wholeheartedly.”
Cross, whom Rye credited with the anti-intellectualism episode idea, stood by her commentary and said she read a transcript from Budden’s episode and watched several segments from his podcast to prepare for the discussion.
“I stand by what I said,” Cross said. “My perspectives and opinions don’t sway in the winds of public opinion. I do think there is very much a toxic landscape that is fueled by a lot of podcast bros.”
She further clarified her thoughts on using Budden as a part of the anti-intellectualism discussion.
“I want to be clear that I wasn’t saying who was intellectual and who was not. My perspective was that there is an anti-intellectual movement ravaging the Black community,” she added. “I also want to be clear that I was not saying that no one should talk to Flip or Joe Budden. Certainly somebody should. Someone should be reaching out to them. That’s not my ministry.”
