Joey Bada$$ recently disclosed that back in the day, before the money, he wanted to be signed to Lil Wayne’s Young Money.
Joseph was spotted on the red carpet for the Black Music Collective Global Impact Awards and chatted with Baller Alert about which version of the iconic New Orleans rapper he preferred, Cash or Young Money era Wayne. The 2000 emcee explained that Tunechi’s YMCMB era was his favorite and provided contextual evidence for his answer.
“YMCMB [Wayne] was crazy. I wanted to be signed to Young Money, fun fact,” the 2000 rapper said. “When I was a kid, word. I had a little bar I was like Lil Diggy, and Twista ain’t got nothing on this. I was with the smoke.”
Young Money yielded some of the game’s most prominent modern stars, such as Nicki Minaj and Drake, with Tyga’s career reinvigorated under the stacked posse. As a collective, YM released their first compilation album with 2009’s We Are Young Money.
The album debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 chart on Dec. 21, 2009, moving 142,000 units in its inaugural week. The LP has since been certified Platinum by the RIAA after selling 1 million copies in the US.
As for Joey Bada$$, he most recently showered another legend with love, releasing a cover of Mos Def’s “UMI” for Triple J.
In detailing his bond with Yasiin Bey’s classic track, the Brooklynite expressed he had a “spiritual connection” to the work.
“It’s such a spiritual connection that I have to this song,” he asserted. “I feel like I could almost relate to what Mos Def is speaking on. As an artist, I can tell this was a song that wasn’t written. This was a song that truly just felt, you know what I’m saying? And that’s probably what I admired about it the most.”
Watch the performance below.