Joe Budden – Mood Muzik 3 – 10 Year Anniversary

Mood Muzik 3 is a classic mixtape, no question about it. It’s arguably his best mixtape too.

I’m biased towards Mood Muzik 2 because of nostalgic reasons but I wouldn’t complaint if someone said MM3 was the better of the two.

In MM3, we found a hungry Joe, a carryover from the prior mixtape. Plus, he opened up more and shared it all on record. His honesty and revelations were amazing to hear, especially to me, who had not heard such things in rap until then, or if I had, a very small sample size.

The type of music I’d hear on here was mind blowing. I was in utter shocked as I listen to this.

“All of Me,” is there anything else that needs to be said? That record is arguably Joe’s greatest record.

“Long Way To Go” is beautiful. An inspirational record that has Joe rapping the lowest of lows but ends with a glimpse of hope.

“Family Reunion” an almost outlier to the rest of the mixtape but an integral key to it, as it allows Joe and his Desert Storm family to simply go off as a rare homage to their early day mixtape scene that all are way too familiar with.

“Send Him Our Love” is a wonderful ode to a fallen friend, brother. You can feel both the pain in Joe’s rap and love that he had for Stack Bundles.

“Secrets” is an amazing display of storytelling that toys with the question: “Is this true?” The craziness that the song endures begs the aforementioned and adds another one to the mix, is this Joe’s story or is it someone he knows? Regardless of the that, the story is almost too insane to comprehend but it’s not too farfetched that it could occurred in the present time.

The boldness of “Talk To ‘Em,” was unreal. Although never mentioned by name, the subliminal Jay Z diss was the beginning of various back and forth jabs between the two rappers. The frustration Joe had with Jay’s presidential run at Def Jam is the force behind this record. Maybe one of the greatest dissed towards Jay in rap history. It doesn’t get much better than “every encore ain’t a good one.”

Now, I have to be honest, when this first came out I wasn’t as familiar with this mixtape as I now am. I was drawn to lyrical onslaught on “Warfare” and the revealing “Dear Diary.” I mean I listened to the entire mixtape when it dropped but I didn’t listen to it with that good of an ear. It was mostly listened to as background music. Then, a few weeks later I finally heard it. I was in a paralyzed state when I heard the sincerity, I was unfamiliar with records like these.

“Long Way To Go” captured my heart at first with its almost sing along approach and feeling it gave me.

Then I caught a listen of “All of Me,” and it was over right then and there. I feel in love with the record.

I nearly cried. I’m not afraid to admit that. I was in awe of Tammy and her story. The voice mail part left me with my jaw dropped.

It’s a well-thought out, brutally honest, beautiful record. There’s not much more I can say that I haven’t said before.

Mood Muzik 3 is a mixture of Joe Budden the rapper and Joe Budden the artist. He’s able to provide content with introspective narrative and content where he shows of his rapping ability. Both complements each other. For the second straight mixtape, Joe delivered again, after many counted him out.