Joey Badass Says Jay-Z Wanted to Manage Him, Not Sign Him as an Artist Early in Career

Joey Badass discussed his ties to fellow New York rap icons Jay-Z and 50 Cent in an interview with Red Bull.

The rapper, who's signed to Columbia, was approached with a deal to Roc Nation in the 2010s but opted out of signing, as detailed in the interview published on Tuesday (May 13). Joey also admitted that he sometimes reflects on how the deal would've turned out.

"I didn’t necessarily opt to go the indie route; it was a chain of communication that I didn’t have any part in," he told Red Bull.

At the time, the "Sorry Not Sorry" rapper was 17 years old and called the opportunity to sign to Hov a "dream" and the "highest honor you can have."

"Jay is my favorite rapper, even to this day, and within a year of being in the game he wanted to sign me," Joey recalled. "But he didn’t want to sign me as an artist, he wanted to manage me. I had a manager at the time and I always wonder if that’s how it got botched."

Back in 2022 during an interview with the Breakfast Club, Joey opened up about opting not to sign with Jay-Z when he was younger.

But Joey also gained a mentor in 50 Cent, who produces Starz crime drama Power Book III: Raising Kanan, which the Brooklyn native stars in. Joey called Fifty a "very interesting individual," which initially "surprised" him.

"Not that I didn’t think he was smart, but I think he’s much smarter than people may think," Joey said, adding that Fif is "very multidimensional."

"He reminds me a lot of myself, like how he thinks. It was really dope to have some one-on-one time with him to understand his level of thought," he continued.

Joey has talked about his meeting with Jay-Z in the past, like his 2016 appearance on Sirius XM's Shade 45, where he detailed taking notes from Jay's 2010 book Decoded.

“There’s this one chapter in there where [Jay Z] went to meet with Russell Simmons to sign with Def Jam. He said his only thought sitting across the table from Russell Simmons was Damn, I don’t wanna be signed to this nigga, I wanna be this nigga,’” Joey recalled around the 3-minute mark of the video below. "I kinda had that same perspective. But shit, shoutout to Jay, man, because he was on it before a lot of people."