Joe Budden, Joell Ortiz, Royce Da 5’9 and KXNG Crooked — collectively known as Slaughterhouse — dropped two albums, multiple EPs and mixtapes over a roughly 10-year period. The group ultimately dissolved in 2018 when Crooked announced his departure. As Budden went on to pursue his podcast dreams, the other three members continued their solo rap careers.
On March 10, KXNG Crooked and Joell Ortiz reunited for a new album called The Rise and Fall of Slaughterhouse. Prior to its arrival, Budden and Ortiz wound up getting into an argument on Instagram Live with Budden telling his former collaborator, “That album can suck my dick!” Now that the project is out, Budden decided to invite Royce on to his podcast to discuss the album in an episode titled, “Crook & Joell Are Playing The Victims.”
But judging by Joe Budden and Royce Da 5’9 comments, they didn’t get what they were expecting. Considering the title, Budden and Royce seemed to think it was going to be one big diss record — and it wasn’t. In fact, they concluded the rollout caused more damage than the actual album itself.
“They kept saying, ‘just wait until you hear the album,’” Budden said. “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.”
Budden then described the album as a “mouse trap with monetary gain attached” and admitted he felt tricked into reacting to the project so it would get more attention.
“It speaks to their sense of quality control… There’s such thing that you can do to bring down the quality of the brand,” Royce said. “There’s such thing you can do to raise the quality of the brand.” He also added he was bothered Ortiz and Crooked appeared to blame them for all the “messed-up” decisions other members have made.
KXNG Crooked spoke about Slaughterhouse’s demise during a recent episode of The Bootleg Kev Podcast and suggested Budden wasn’t being truthful about what went down.
“Put yourself in the fans shoes for a minute,” he said. “You’ve been waiting on one of your favourite groups in the world to drop an album for 10 years. Now behind the scenes, I’ve been taking flights to New York, go talk to Paul Rosenberg. I’ve been taking flights to Detroit, talking to Em, talking to Royce, how can we put this back together? It’s not happened in 10 years. So you’re telling me you want me to wait again and then I saw something where Royce said that we weren’t waiting on anybody… that’s a lie.
“So I need to address all this stuff because whenever they say that I just come back with the truth. You can attack my character my integrity, you could try to assassinate it and say that I’m a liar and I’m doing this for money and all that shit.”
Check out the album below and watch the full episode of The Joe Budden Podcast above.
