I remember being in tenth grade when Joe Budden’s first single “Pump it Up” came out. To be 100% honest, I didn’t care for it at all. After that track, it almost seemed like Joe fell flat off the face of the earth. From what I’ve gathered, Joe has released some mixtapes in the interim but nothing really serious… until Padded Room. It took me a while to even give this CD a complete listen because I had no idea what it was going to be like. Once I did start listening I just couldn’t get a grasp right away of how to feel. Joe has a line in the first track on the album “Now I Lay” that sums up the aforementioned statement perfectly, “It’d take you a long time to evaluate me”. It literally took me about 20 listens to get a good feel for this album, but my general consensus is that this album is damn good. Continue reading


