Joe Budden – Padded Room (2-24-2009)

Posted on Feb 20 in Reviewsby adminPrint

In the six years that have passed since Joe Budden’s last effort much has changed in the hip hop world. For starters nobody is selling shit these days and furthermore the attention span of hip-hop heads has gotten even shorter as of recent. Luckily for Joe Budden his Mood Music mixtape series has kept his name buzzing in the streets enough to warrant his fans to actually anticipate his sophomore effort Padded Room. With this release it’s definitely do or die for the New Jersey MC.

Joe Budden does a horrible job on starting his second album out on the right foot. Both “Now I Lay” and the Game assisted “The Future” fail to capture any relevant attention. On “If I Gotta Go” Budden makes himself look like a complete ass by asserting the notion that he’s smarter than everyone else in the world, especially those with college degrees. Things finally start to look a little better when producer Blastah Beatz lifts a sample from the deep within 80s for the appeasing “Don’t Make Me.”

Joe manages to make himself look even stupider on “Blood On The Wall” as he proceeds to take shots at fellow NY spitter Prodigy, who just happens to be currently locked up. Up to the midpoint of the album the highlight is definitely the domestic violence and sexually aggressive “Exxxes.” On the bass-less “I Couldn’t Help It” Joe uses the song’s first verse to apologize to his seed for having premeditated thoughts of abortion then uses the rest of the time to discuss his sorrow for knocking off another rapper’s wife or something like that.

After some of the most annoying output I’ve heard within the past year on the rock influenced “Adrenaline” Joe steps his game up on the Qwan produced “Happy Holidays.” On the aforementioned track Joe digs deep into his soul to discuss his disgust with random holidays, birthdays, and family get togethers.

Joe uses tracks such as the Blastah Beats produced efforts “Do Tell” and “Angel In My Life” to delve deeper into the inner demons that continue to torment his everyday outlook on life. On the Versatile and Dilemmma helmed “Pray For Me”  Joe takes a page out of books written by DMX and Snoop as he takes a solid five minutes to have a heart to heart conversation with God on what turns out to be the albums standout track.

Padded Room turns out to be a tale of two sides. The first half is rather dry, unadventurous, and for a lack of better words, garbage. The second half of the album sees Joe digging deeper into his inner most feelings and actually creating compelling material for the listener. Though the album doesn’t feature any utterly disgusting hip-hop tracks like “Pump It Up” it still won’t be mentioned five years from now as a memorable rap release. In this writer’s personal opinion Joe Budden has gone 0 for 2 during his career, a record he probably won’t rebound from!

VERDICT – 11 / 20
LYRICS: 3
PRODUCTION: 3
DELIVERY: 3
CONSISTENCY: 2