Joe Budden must not have gotten the memo. Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothing to fuck with.

He had to find out the hard way, the other day, out in California, on the latest stop of the Rock the Bells tour, which, in the face of reason, has become a sort of hip-hop Lollapalooza - the original Lollapalooza, where umpteen groups would travel around in a huge caravan, just waiting to get stopped by police and busted for drugs. People kept hitting me up about the incident with Raekwon and Joe Budden this weekend at the modern day Lollapalooza, the destination festival in Chicago, while I was trying to enjoy acts like Andrew Bird and Neko Case. Of course I couldn't help but note the irony.

Rock the Bells always did have the dates out in California and then New York, but I see they've been gradually expanding to several different points in between. I read the other day in the Riverfront Times that they've got a show in motherfucking Columbia, MO, in what sounds like a smaller rock club. Maybe they can round up enough hip-hop fans to play at a bus stop in Houston, where they had to cancel a date a few years ago, because they couldn't sell enough tickets. I can't say I was surprised in the least bit.

Joe Budden was in his dressing room out in California, live broadcasting on Joe Budden TV, so the Internet Soldiers could watch him eat grapes and twiddle his ballsack, or whatever he does before a show. I'd suggest he stream video of himself banging Taheezo, but I doubt very many of the Internet Soldiers are interested in older black chicks. They might listen to Joe Budden, but how many of them read Black Ass, or that one with the huge fat women that's popular with guys in prison, published by the same people who do those true crime magazines? I know enough 20-something white guys to know they don't get down like, regardless of their taste in music. I know I wouldn't.

Raekwon and his crew Ice Water, who, from what I understand, are a buncha elderly black men, decided they'd pay Joe Budden a visit and have it out with him. They were pissed off at something Budden said in a video, back when he was beefing with Method Man over the fact that Method Man was on the late, great Vibe magazine's list of the top 50 rappers of all time, and Joe Budden wasn't. And rightfully so. Budden and Method Man already made out in the bushes behind Jones Beach a month or so ago, but this video was shot the day before that happened, and it looked, to Raekwon, like Joe Budden squashed his beef with Method Man, then turned right around and dissed him again.

I only realized this just now, in the five minutes I spent researching this post, before my $10-a-day hotel wifi runs out (I'm not about to re-up for you fruits, and of course XXL would never foot the bill for, like, anything), but it seems like it would have been pretty easy for Joe Budden to explain this to Raekwon and Ice Water. If it's true what Joe Budden says, that his beef with Method Man has long since been squashed, and that this was all one huge misunderstanding, it seems like there was a way he could have gotten out of this without being coerced into apologizing to Raekwon, and without getting knocked right the fuck out. Instead, Joe Budden somehow managed to apologize to Raekwon and get knocked right the fuck out.

Say what you will about Brisco, at least he managed to get robbed of $40,000 in jewelry, $1,000 cash in a Louis Vuitton wallet, and a Range Rover, without getting pistol whipped. He'd probably seen that video of Big Pun's lazy, ungrateful wife suffering the consequences of not bringing Big Pun a sandwich. That looked like the kind of shit you'd try to avoid at all costs, including your ego. Brisco probably figured he'd either get severely beaten and robbed of $100,000 worth of shit, or he'd just get robbed of $100,000 worth of shit, and he chose the latter. Joe Budden's dumb ass managed to get punked and beaten up, when, at the very least, he could have just gotten punked, but he probably could have avoided even that.

Again, as was the case with Brisco, I would never be in a situation like this. But if I was, I wonder how difficult it would have been for me to explain to Raekwon that I'm done beefing with Wu-Tang, Method Man and I already went into the woods and kissed each other on the lips (nullus), and that video you saw took place the day before, when I still subscribed to the inner city middle school/eskay style of conflict resolution. (Say it to my face!) Mickey Factz, who can't possibly be getting paid to do anything other than Honda commercials (for which he's off the artistic roll call), even said Raekwon didn't enter the room with the intention of causing Joe Budden to look like Rihanna.

Let me guess: the same thing that happened to Taheezo happened to Joe Budden. He went shooting off at the lip, all but daring someone to put a shoe on him, and someone actually did it. When Taheezo wanted to pop shit about it in one of their YouTube videos, Joe Budden knew better than to let her even pretend like she didn't have that coming. Let's see if he's capable of following his own advice.

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