Joey Bada$$ Has No Issue Partnering With Columbia Right Now
Last week, I received an email announcing the start of Joey Bada$$’s artist-in-residence engagement with Columbia University. He had already done a bit of press about the opportunity, highlighting how it plays into his history of university lectures and men’s mentorship initiatives, but not the elephant in the room. In 2024, relations between Columbia administrators and students hit a 1968 low as the former called the NYPD to remove pro-Palestine protesters from an occupied hall. Beatings and mass arrests ensued. This month, students saw campus activist Mahmoud Khalil spirited into detention, while the school acquiesced to a strenuous White House list of demands including a mask ban while under threat of losing $400 million in federal funding. I needed to know what kind of time an incoming artist in residence is preparing for in the midst of all this.
There was also the matter of whether or not Joey is currently engaged in unrequited beef with Kendrick Lamar, as many listeners have gleaned from “The Ruler’s Back,” “Sorry Not Sorry,” and “Pardon Me,” a trio of winter loosies. A J. Cole joke and a Jay-Z quote sent the rap-podcast and -forum sphere beyond mere speculation and into certainty that this is a repeat of Joey’s reply to the “Control” verse in 2013, when Lamar claimed to be “king of New York.” The new cuts could be read as a personal tiff with very specific artists or as a Brooklyn rap obsessive reflecting on a mass-media and major-label feeding frenzy out west. But the finer points of theories that Joey is anti-TDE grow specious, rooted in the same confirmation bias that populates the loftier reviewed Genius annotations. With some time on the phone late last week, I prodded Joey Bada$$ about the Columbia residency, whether the TDE whispers are the usual post-beef audience delirium, and what actually inspired his new songs. “Being in a new chapter of my life,” he says, “I feel a bit more daring and fearless and ready to do whatever I want.”
Success has looked different for you than what we might have wanted for someone coming up with rap-prodigy prestige. Instead of five classic platinum-selling albums from a young prospect, you branched out into acting, education, and mentorship. Was your eye always on the other fields?
I’ve always prided myself on being more than what people expected. For a long time, I didn’t know if I wanted to be a rapper. When I was in fifth grade, I was voted most likely to be president. It doesn’t surprise me nearly 15 years later that there’s all this success in interdisciplinary fields. Rap is just a medium that I use to communicate my gifts and my message to the world.
So the goal of the new artist-in-residence partnership is to share how you’ve learned to use hip-hop as a tool to spread knowledge?
For me it’s just about thinking outside of the box, daring to be different, defying the limits. Who would’ve thought that a rapper from Brooklyn, a high-school dropout at that, would be a scholar in residence at Columbia University? And this is my second university residency. This is about showing people we can be limitless no matter where we come from.
What would you say your duties entail? We always hear about those kinds of collaborations, but we don’t necessarily know what the day-to-day looks like.
My duty’s just to kinda show up and be myself, and give the students a slice of my experience. It’s as simple as that. I’m there to show and inform them, to enlighten them on my path and how I’ve gotten to the room that I’ll be sitting in with them.
Have you been on campus recently?
Not super recently in light of everything going on, but last year we had our first Impact Summit there. The Gordon Institute was kind enough to let us use their space. That was the last time I was on campus.
How do you feel about the current moment in discourse about safe spaces for people of color? The school is—
—I think that we couldn’t have found a more timely moment to be doing this scholar in residency, because I show up as a representative of the underrepresented and underprivileged. I get to share my perspective. I get to give the students hope. We can defy these limits, no matter what type of limitations they continue to put on us or what type of supplications they try to take away.
Last year on campus was intense, but this year people are disappearing. A student is suing to keep from being deported. Hip-hop is a crossroads of free expression, of the political. How do you feel your role has changed here?
I don’t think that it’s changing at all. I think this aligns with who I’ve always been. I’ve always been outspoken on social injustices. So like I said, I think that the moment is very timely to have someone like me on the campus, because I’mma speak my mind and I’mma always call it how I see it. It doesn’t take Joey Bada$$ to say that what’s going on is fucked up right now. But it is a good thing that Joey Bada$$ is here, because I’m definitely in solidarity with the side being oppressed.
Outside your role with Columbia, you’ve been working on Power Book III: Raising Kanan. Talk to me about letting people believe your character, Unique, died last season. It sounded like you were being written off the show due to clashing commitments. Was that a ruse?
I was going on tour, and there was a conflict with the show schedule. I had to do a run at the same time. Initially it was farewell to Unique. I would’ve loved to continue, or to do the opposite of Kanye and leave while I’m hot. But I remember going to get my head casted and just being like, Oh hell nah. I’m not ready to say good-bye to this role. I called Sasha Penn and said “What can we do?” He said, “Joey, don’t play with me.” I was dead serious. He said we’d figure it out. I couldn’t tell the public anything. The scheduling conflict was real. But I already knew I was coming back when I said it.
Do you get any of that wardrobe? Raising Kanan might feature the most Polo I’ve seen in television.
I don’t keep the fits, but I might’ve stolen a chain or two.
You also recently dropped three new songs and have people on both coasts dissing you.
Oh yeah. It’s been … fun.
I don’t know if “Ruler’s Back” is doing everything people think it is. I feel like it’s calling back to an older New York City — Jay and 50 Cent’s New York — and maybe people are trapped in a beef framework.
You get it. None of it is real problems. To the people who felt like somebody was shouting down their team and they’re standing up for their side, I commend it, I applaud it. If anything, I’m flattered because I caused it. They get to have a moment off of my moment. We all win. I think it’s good for the sport of hip-hop. This was more about a call to action to New York. It was never no West Coast hate. I got way too many allies on the West to just be like, “Yo, eff the West.”
But you did kinda get at Cole: “Might deletе later, I know damn sure that Joey won’t.”
Bro, Cole is the homie.
He pulled one of the funnier plays in beef history.
For me, it’s all fun. To be honest, I didn’t think “Ruler’s Back” was going to get that type of response. I genuinely assumed that people would be like, Oh yeah, this is Joey. We know where he’s coming from. We know that’s a Jay-Z flip. We know he got all the West Coast allies. He’s not dissing. He’s being slick. But it landed on the doorstep of so many people who felt like they needed to say something. So when I came back with “Sorry Not Sorry” it was a matter of, “I’m not taking back what I said.” So that’s kind of how the Cole jab came about. But again, it’s all sport, man.
What sparked the thought that created the songs?
I just followed my impulse. It’s hard to do that when you’re signed to a label or you got all of these people on your team. It gotta go to the marketing team, and then it gotta go to the digital team, and then we gotta pitch it to DSPs. I was tired of that. Like, I just want to rap. I ain’t tell nobody. I just put it up. That was the beauty of it. To see it get the type of reaction it had, I was like, Wow, I need to do this more often.
You were talking about a call to action for New York. Are you a sexy drill-music guy?
I love the sexy drill stuff. I love Cash Cobain and Chow Lee. I take it in doses but I definitely vibe out to it. There’s talks of me and Cash Cobain working together. Who knows? You might see that in the future. I support it.
You’re still seen as this boom-bap protector figure. How do you feel about that?
I know, it’s weird. I feel like I have to drop something soon that’s going to remind people of the layers and the range in which I possess as an artist and a human being. I think that’s why I show up a lot in these multidisciplinary areas. I’m constantly having to show people that they don’t know me. People think of me in this type of box. But even musically I feel like I have so much more to show. It’s partially my fault. Sometimes I get caught up in, This is what they want from me. Maybe they won’t accept this. Sometimes I have to take space away from the usual so I can get inspired again. That’s what “Ruler’s Back,” “Sorry Not Sorry,” and “Pardon Me” were about. But I have a whole album I’ve been working on for the last two years that’s completely different. “Ruler’s Back” was kind of a departure from the sound I’ve been working on. You know when you’re hiking and you’ve got a big backpack and you finally get that moment to take it off? That’s “Ruler’s Back.” Let me get loose real quick.
If “1 Train” was being made in 2025, who would you cast?
J.I.D and Denzel Curry.
Last year, Eric Adams christened Joey Bada$$ Day. I’ve never spoken to anyone who gets one of these. What do you get? How does it work? Do you keep the day forever?
Honestly, I have no idea. When I showed up to that event, I didn’t even know I was getting honored. They surprised me with that. I’m at my desk right now with the proclamation right here. “December 20 is Joey Bada$$ Day.” My birthday is January 20. If I got to choose, I would’ve made it my birthday. This year I’m going to have to call Eric Adams like, “Yo, what we doing?”
Wild time for that one on mayoral primary polling alone.
Indeed. He wasn’t at the event, respectfully. My man is in Zero Bond cooling, getting sturdy.
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