Joe Budden Breaks Silence On Melyssa Ford’s Departure And Jim Jones

Joe Budden has now directly addressed Melyssa Ford’s decision to step away from his show, The Joe Budden Podcast. While speaking with Jim Jones for his Artist 2 Artist podcast, Budden shared that he still cares for Ford and made it clear that bringing in Mona Love was not meant to replace her in any way.

"I did not do a swap," he explained when Jim asked if Mona was stepping into Ford’s spot. "Melyssa stepped away and Mel was negotiating for quite some time. Shout out to Melyssa. We love her." After that, the conversation shifted to Mona, with both of them complimenting her humor and the energy she adds to the podcast.

Supporters online appreciated the way Budden handled the topic. "A diplomatic answer. Our guy is really acting like he owns a 20 millionaire company in these spaces. Alright now Mr. Joe," one person wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Another fan said, "Hopefully this ends the talk. Some of Ya get real nasty when it comes to talking about Mel. She gone, Mona there, enjoy."

Listeners have been left unsure about the real reason behind Ford’s absence from The Joe Budden Podcast, which has caused a lot of theorizing. Her time on the show started to become less frequent over the past few months until she eventually stopped appearing at all. That shift led many people to assume that she and Budden had some kind of disagreement.

Although she never mentioned Budden directly, Ford recently expressed her frustrations to Charlamagne Tha God about dealing with misogyny in the podcast space, which is largely led by men. "I have had my own experiences being around a certain group of men who have exhibited groupthink," she said. "And that groupthink tends to lean very misogynistically. It has an effect on you as somebody who is just kind of absorbing it, simply just because I am a woman and I am the woman in the room."

In another part of Budden’s conversation with Jim Jones, the two explored their thoughts on the music business, how to build a podcast from the ground up, and several other topics.