October 30, 2025
Angela Rye has issued a formal apology to Joe Budden for naming a podcast episode about the “Dumbing Down of America” after him.
Angela Rye issued a formal apology to Joe Budden after naming him in her podcast titled “Joe Budden and the Dumbing Down of America.”
On the Oct. 27 episode of her Native Land podcast, Angela Rye and cohosts Tiffany Cross, Andrew Gillum, and Bakari Sellers were joined by Charlamagne Tha God following their episode on Black intellectualism, which had a title that initially took aim at Joe Budden. Following a copyright complaint from Budden’s team over the use of a clip from his show, Rye named the episode “Do We Need to Talk About Black Intellectualism?” and apologized to Budden for singling him out in the original title.
“We should’ve titled it differently,” Rye said. “I think what we did was wrong, and I do want to apologize to Joe Budden’s podcast, to their team, to their production company for that title. I’m an EP on this show, and so I own that wholeheartedly.”
“I think that what they took offense to was that it looked like we were saying that they are responsible for the dumbing down of America,” she added.
Rye offered her apology after Charlamagne opened the discussion by addressing their earlier debate on Black intellectualism.
The Breakfast Club host criticized Rye and her cohosts for sounding “elitist” toward Joe Budden and his team in their reaction to the tense on-air exchange between Marc Lamont Hill and Queenzflip.
In her initial reaction to the Hill and Queenzflip argument on Budden’s podcast, Rye said that Budden and his cohosts—aside from Hill—wouldn’t be invited on her show. However, she rejected claims that she was unwilling to engage with guests who weren’t “on the same level” intellectually as her or her fellow hosts.
“Of course, Marc is welcome anytime. I don’t know about the rest of them,” Rye said. “But I will just say, you know, I don’t think that that means that we should be foreclosed to having discussions that are tough or where we don’t think people are our peers or we’re on the same level. I’m not into that.”
While Rye and her cohosts stood by their views in the Black intellectualism debate, both Rye and Cross acknowledged that the episode title shouldn’t have singled out Joe Budden.
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