Joe Budden Says He’ll Apologize to Meek Mill and Nicki Minaj

Earlier this week, Joe Budden found his name in the headlines over what he had thought were off-hand comments. The New Jersey native caught the ire of Meek Mill over comments that Budden had made on his podcast. On a recent episode, the "All of Me" star cracked that Meek's very public displays of affection toward Nicki Minaj are at odds with his on-wax persona. This led to a Twitter spat (in which Minaj eventually got involved) and several pasta-based insults. Today (July 7), Budden called in to New York's Hot 97 in an attempt to clear the whole thing up. "First of all, if there's anyone that's for love in the community and to your significant other, it would be me," he said, while going back and forth with Ebro. Budden went on to say that his comments were stripped from their context and made to seem more serious than they really were: "This is what happens on podcasts. You half-heartedly speak on things that might be a hot topic. So the [BET Awards] came on and the camera guys just showed a lot of shots of Meek blissfully smiling in love. I thought it was funny, so we joked about it on the podcast." Budden says that he has every intention of apologizing to both Meek and Nicki, and says that the former still follows him on Twitter.

Joe has enjoyed some mainstream media attention in the last few years, though not all of it is because of his music. Slaughterhouse, the super group he formed with Crooked I, Royce da 5'9″ and Joell Ortiz, gathered considerable steam at the turn of the last decade, and the quartet landed a deal with Eminem's Shady Records. But Budden has broken through largely as a social media presence and with his appearances on reality television, especially a starring role on VH1′s Love and Hip Hop. Prior to this period, he was one of the Eastern seaboard's (and Internet's) favorite mixtape rappers, with his Mood Muzik series racking up hundreds of thousands of streams. Budden first caught the public eye with his breakthrough 2003 hit "Pump It Up," produced by Just Blaze and featured on his self-titled Def Jam debut.