Joe Budden and Drake set off a new episode of their ongoing rivalry earlier this month. Tensions reignited after Budden called Drake a ‘B****’ on a recent episode of The Joe Budden Podcast. Budden’s verbal assault was triggered by a federal judge dismissing his defamation suit against the Universal Music Group. Claiming to have anticipated the result, Budden said, “The Drake news about the lawsuit broke, but to me it’s not that important. I never thought it would go any other way.”
Joe Budden calls out Drake after his UMG lawsuit was dismissed
Budden shared with the viewers his fresh, raw, summed-up take on Marc Lamont Hill’s rundown of the lawsuit. To say it was far from positive would be an understatement.
“For those who missed it, around 6 or 7 p.m. yesterday, it was finally confirmed— the news broke that Drake’s a bi—,” Budden said. “The same thing I told you 11 months ago rang true at 6 p.m. yesterday. Some tweet went around saying Drake lost ‘the n—a way and the white way.’ That was a good one. People just started having fun with it”, he added.
In essence, a federal judge found no confirming evidence that Kendrick Lamar was actually accusing Drake of being a pedophile in his diss tracks like “Not Like Us.” The judge justified the heated exchange as a mere “war of words”, thereby calling parts of the related lawsuit “logically incoherent.”
Following the lawsuit, Budden took to Instagram, trolling Drake by posting a tired-looking photo of the rapper on his story. In February 2025, Drake had posted a video of Budden stepping out of a car on his PlotTwist burner account.
An infuriated Budden retaliated by calling Drake a “corpse”. “Drake, don’t shoot at me now that you’re ice‑cold. I’m not doing the back‑and‑forth with a corpse… Don’t go get shot all year and then pop up like Bernie in Weekend at Bernie’s trying to aim at me”, he said.
