Joe Good Retires

Friday night, Mac Lethal texted me and said “Joe Good quit.” I replied, “Quit what?” Mac said: “Everything.”

I didn’t believe Mac at first, thinking he was pulling a prank or maybe kicking off some kind of publicity stunt for his and Joe’s label, Black Clover. However, in the ensuing text conversation, Mac sounded sincere, saying “I wouldn’t tell you if it was a phase he was going through. It’s over.”

The next day, after noticing that he had completely disappeared from MySpace, I reached Joe Good on the phone. Sure enough, one of KC hip-hop’s best and brightest sons is quitting (or hopefully just taking a break from) the game to focus on other priorities. “I’m not interested in making a career out of it,” Joe explained. In measured tones, he indicated that he wasn’t enjoying working as a hip-hop artist right now and needed a break to reassess what he enjoyed about making music — that is (I would add), if he decides to return to music at all.

As Pitch writer Nadia said when I told her the news, “I hope he ‘quits’ like Jay-Z.”