Vince Staples Explains Publishing Splits Is a Deeper Issue Than Rap Beef: ‘I Just Think We're Into Bullsh*t’

Vince Staples thinks that there's deeper issues in hip-hop than Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole going back and forth with each other on songs.

A veteran guest on The Joe Budden Podcast, Staples appeared on the latest episode when the crew chatted about Cole waving the white flag about issuing a diss track to Kendrick.

Around the 1:39:50 mark of the podcast, the Long Beach rapper got a call from Budden, and the two traded some banter before hopping into the topic at hand.

"Y'all got real happy when n***as started rap beefing," Staples said. "Then y'all got real sad when n***as lose their publishing, n***as go to jail, n***as die and all that other stuff. It's like, we either with the coonery or we not, bro."

After Ish clarified that he "was with the competition" between Kendrick and Cole, Staples agreed that "hip-hop is a sport," although audiences get "happy about little stupid shit."

"But then we want to be like, equal and respected and having good business acumen, and shit like that. It's like, you kinda can't have both, but I get it though."

Staples then delved into hip-hop being "adopted into other forms of music" and "cutouts" being implemented into the genre for "musicians," "middlemen" and "publishing."

"When you think about hip-hop as it originated, there was a technical skill that was part of every facet of hip-hop," he added before getting into the evolution of hip-hop production from analog to digital.

After bringing up RZA, who claimed in the late 2000s he invented the Final Scratch technology on Serato, Staples returned to the music industry capitalizing off of rap feuds.

"Even a 50-50 split of publishing in hip-hop is something that comes from them not respecting rap lyrics as actual songwriting and them finding a way to make it fair, which makes the producers king, instead of the songwriter being king," he said.

"And then we have every songwriter that we've ever had in hip-hop music complaining about their publishing splits, but, we kind of don't pay attention to that. But once n***as get mad, the whole internet is activated, and we got billboards from streamers talking about 'hip-hop is a sport.' But we ain't never seen a billboard from a streamer that said, "Give that n***a his publishing back."

When asked about what the production side has to do with war, Staples affirmed that rap beef isn't a war. "Why are we at war with the n***a that's making a song and not the motherfucker who owns the whole thing? We don't say their name at all. We quiet when they do some fuck shit."

While a dissappointed Budden wanted to discuss rap beef, Staples acknowledged that there was no point because "we don't have rap labels no more." "Nobody say nothing about that. Nobody wanna talk about these labels folding, they do nothing and then fire 50 percent of people, fire hip-hop radio people that's been working at these labels for 20, 30 years. That's not war though, right?"

He continued, "I'm saying we don't want to pay attention, I don't think that it's just some conspiracy; I just think we're into bullshit."

We'll see if the music industry at large listens and stops instigating rap conflicts.