Nah, Joe wasn't too early.
Joe's problem with his rap career was always that he didn't want to do any of the other stuff that goes into being a successful rapper other than rapping.
He never wanted to do promo, he never wanted to maintain and use the relationships he had to his advantage. Apparently Mal had to FORCE him to call Lil Wayne for a verse that he was ready and willing to give him.
Lost in all Joe's talk about protecting the artists and shytting on labels is that he always says that it's the label's job to get an artist hot and promote them. While that's true to an extent, it's really hard to promote someone who isn't playing along with it.
That's part of why that "I became what you were supposed to be" line from Drake got him so worked up. Budden legit could've been in Drake's spot if he was willing to work for it.
That shyt was fukking mind boggling. He really is out of touch with regular life for most people, and the experience of an artist working their way up.
Sure, there are more ways than ever to get your music out in front of people, but how many of those ways actually get you paid? And at some point, of you're going to truly make it, you physically can't hold down a full time job while pursuing your career. And if music is the only thing you're doing, it's real hard to turn down straight up cash when you don't have it coming in from somewhere else.
Now, in a perfect world, artists would just sign shorter contracts for their first deal. For most hip hop artists, unless they're cranking albums (that the label actually counts as albums) out back to back, five albums might be six or seven years in, when they've already peaked.
