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I won’t even say arguably…Joey Bada$$ is Brooklyn hip-hop right now…maybe all of New York for that matter in terms of speaking of hip-hop’s roots. When he first came on the scene he had a notable verse on A$AP Rocky”s song “1 Train” with a line than went “And I might sign to the Roc, but my n*ggas on the block is still signed to the rock…” Right there he let us in on a dilemma he was facing if he should sign to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation or not. Now, he sheds some light on that topic. Hit the jump!

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First Joey reminisces on coming up and getting that opportunity to sign with Hov:

“When I was like f*cking 13 or 15, I was trapped in that mainstream rap, mainstream media. I always wanted to rap. At that time, I was like, ‘Yo, I want to get signed to Young Money, be like Lil Twist or Lil Chukee and shit.’ Then when I got older I got into high school, started stepping my bars up. I only wanted to be signed to Jay Z. It was crazy that I made it happen in two years, literally from 15 to 17, I was already in that Roc Nation elevator going up to the 39th floor.”

Then he goes into what made his change his mind and Jay-Z’s career having influence over it:

“That moment made me knew that I could do anything. I even read Jay Z’s Decoded book and there’s this one chapter in there where he was, when he went to go meet with Russell Simmons to sign with Def Jam, he said his only thought was sitting across the table from Russell Simmons was, ‘Damn, I don’t wanna sign to this nigga. I wanna be this nigga.’ I kinda took that same, I kinda had that same perspective, but shit, shoutout to Jay, man because he was on it before a lot of people.”

How do you think Joey Bada$$ would have fared if he did sign to the Roc? Drop some comments below and check out the full interview here:

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