A Villian's Everyday Struggle...

Everyday Struggle was an internet hit that put Complex back in the conversation of being a relevant platform for the culture. Even with being 1 of 3 hosts Joe Budden through his hip-hop career as well as TV career on Love in Hip-Hop brought the most notoriety to the show. And with this notoriety brought the crazy, ranting, passionate about the culture monologues that became known as "Joe Just Being Joe". It was when "Joe Just Being Joe" that some of the most magical moments happened on the show and helped to make it one of the top streamed shows on the internet.  Many thought even with Joe's rants that he was irreplaceable, but even he quickly realized that in the corporate world that Beyoncé was right, nobody's IRREPLACEABLE.

When did Joe get fired?
Complex's initial communication was that Joe Budden had been on paternity leave following him and his girl having a newborn baby. So there will be special guest hosts in his absence. Which Joe says he never intended to take a  paternity leave. But in fact his contract was up and they were still in negotiations. And that Complex was really testing the waters to see how the show would perform without him.

• It was on Tuesday December 19th that we learned that Joe Budden's time at Everyday Struggle / Complex was up.

Here's some of the points he made on his podcast "The Joe Budden Podcast" about the reason why Complex took him from the show "Everyday Struggle".

His Reasons

• He starts out his argument that he was a star and their were certain amenities that comes with that which he didn't receive. In his example it was a smoking room. He makes an argument that people who are apart of the culture know that people are going to smoke and if they didn't want that in their bathrooms that they could've built him a smoking room. But since Verizon who owns Complex is not apart of the culture that they only worried about the bottom line (the numbers) and not the culture.

 

• His next point is based off sponsorship dollars. He says within months Nike cut a check to Complex for the crew to promote and wear the Nike Vapors on the show. A check of which none of the 3 hosts ever got a check for. So Joe wanting a piece of this pie the next time around when Spotify wanted to cut a check to Complex to promote their RapCavier playlists on the show wasn't about to make the same mistake twice. But Complex stated he was under contract so no renegotiation would be happening. Which Joe decided not to do the promotion for Spotify at all. Which was fine for Complex, but Spotify did have a problem with this. In Spotify's eyes Joe is a packed deal and there was no deal without him. And Complex had messed up a business relationship by trying to do business without Joe.

 

• Probably one of his least valid points is that he says that he hates guests. It's a fucking internet podcast. At some point he had to know that he would be interviewing people. And even more important is that it was from these interviews that some of the most memorable moments of the shows occurred like the Lil Yachty interview (read our review here) and also the Migos interview that blew up the internet.

 

• Another point he made was that he knew the writing was on the wall when Complex started doing Friday episodes without him to see how the show would do without him. Which the show did have a dip numbers. Also Complex didn't realize the respect level that Joe has in the culture as some of the guests would not even do the show if Joe wasn't there. 

 

• Lastly he makes the point that Verizon bought Complex which means that their is no one in the culture making decisions. Nobody that knows the importance of doing things that are business wise unconventional but is important enough o do for the culture. This is a lesson that many brands like Nike have learned as their market share as went down and the reemergence of Champion that has seen their market share go up because of making moves for the culture.

One thing that Everyday Struggle showed is that the world needs villains (i.e. Joe Budden). Because without the villains nobody would care about heroes. This is the reason why people watched American Idol was to see what the villains Simon would say, not to hear people sing. The same goes here. Nobody watched Everyday Struggle to learn about things that just had happened in hip-hop. We have the internet for that. We watched Everyday Struggle to hear what Joe thought about it. So as the saying goes.. Either you die and become a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain. But in a crazy twist Joe Budden is that hero that we didn't ask for, but he was the hero that we needed.

Check out the podcasts below to watch in his words what happened.