Slaughterhouse was a musical supergroup composed of rappers Joe Budden, Joell Ortiz, Kxng Crooked, and Royce da 5’9”. Though the group parted ways in 2018, recent rumors had fans believing that the group was making a comeback. Unfortunately, only half of the members followed through with a project.
KXNG Crooked and Joell Ortiz recently released a joint body of work titled Rise & Fall of Slaughterhouse on March 11 of this year. The promotion and rollout of this new album, which clearly referenced the group as a whole, didn’t sit too well with the left-out members of the ex-group.
Royce joined Joe on his show, The Joe Budden Podcast, to give a review of the project that seemingly was a diss to them. Uploaded to YouTube, the video was titled, “Crook & Joell Are Playing The Victims,” thus already alluding to the duo’s distaste.
Starting out the discussion, Joe had a hard time figuring out how he should go about giving a review. In an effort to be unbiased, he had to choose which 'hat' he should wear when giving an opinion— his options being: the therapist, MC, or friend.
Royce also felt that there were numerous ways to assess the album. “One way to look at it is if it gave you the fulfillment you were looking for. We don’t qualify to say if y’all hit y’alls mark. If there was a certain reaction that they were looking for from us, I would need to know what that is,” he stated.
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Royce believes that the feelings the two rappers thought they would evoke in him were actually the complete opposite. He went on to explain that the rollout of the album hurt him more than the music itself, as every song was not about him and Joe, or the fall of Slaughterhouse, like they initially thought it would be.
“They kept saying, ‘just wait until you hear the album,’” Budden mentioned. Joe was also under the impression that there was pertinent information on the records that he couldn’t go without hearing.
Building up to the release of the album, Joel and Joe had a heated argument via Instagram live. With all the commotion surrounding the highly anticipated drop, Budden was left disappointed. He stated in the podcast, “For me, it was a little anticlimactic. It was like a rollercoaster. You watch it go up. It’s going up and it's going up, and you expect the-- and then you’re let down.”
Ultimately, the two expected there to be more spice after getting riled up with the rollout. Joe described the entire situation as a “mouse trap with monetary gain attached.” He felt baited to react to the project to boost its popularity before it was released.
Royce chimed in by saying, "It speaks to their sense of quality control… There’s such thing that you can do to bring down the quality of the brand. There’s such thing you can do to raise the quality of the brand." He went on to reference how Bad Meets Evil was able to do the latter for the Slaughterhouse crew as a whole while insinuating that this particular joint effort is doing the former. Royce was upset that he and Joe are being blamed for all the "messed-up" decisions that other members have made.
He also stated that there isn’t one line on the project that can compare to what he could drop if he was upset. He included that he felt he did nothing wrong in the situation.
After Joe called their act “careless and unsupervised,” Royce joked by saying, “Everything, though. The way they dressed in the video-- their pants,” in reference to an unnamed music video from the album.
All in all, Joe and Royce feel that their ex-group members shouldn’t be playing with their names.
What are your feelings on the album? Check out the full video down below.