A new wave of revelations washes over the Slaughterhouse fanbase. This time KXNG Crooked admits that he was not keen on continuing working with Joe Budden and gives reasons why.
Crook and Joell Ortiz told their side of the story on “Rise and Fall of Slaughterhouse” and prompted an outburst of emotions from Royce da 5’9 and Joe Budden, who did not participate in the project. In a recent interview with Bootleg Kev, Crook once again recapped the broken communication between the group members that led to the final rift between them.
This time, however, KXNG Crooked admits that he feels like he did not convey to Royce da 5’9 how little patience he had left for Joe Budden:
As a friend, I could have communicated better to Royce that: “I’m only talking to Joe for you. I would prefer to move Slaughterhouse forward without Joe. Because Joe is retired. And there’s been a lot of snags dealing with Joe in the business side of things. So I would rather move Slaughterhouse forward without Joe. But as a courtesy to my friend — and I know you fuck with Joe, and I know you have a different relationship with Joe — that’s fine, bring Joe to the table”. But I don’t think that as a friend I communicated THAT enough. He knows where I’m at. But I feel like he felt he could massage the situation, “Crook got love for me, Joe got love for me. I could probably be the glue to keep all that shit together”. But he didn’t know I was at my last, final breaking point with Joe. As far as the Slaughterhouse situation goes.
Crook mentioned earlier that he could not bear any more waiting initiated by Joe and aimed and satisfying his needs. The Long Beach MC gave a solid list of situations when Joe Budden halted group progress by prioritising something else over the group interests. And this behaviour was in place from the very start, he says. Exhibit one, a track Eminem recorded with Slaughterhouse to release on “Recovery”:
We started off early days in Slaughterhouse waiting on Joe. When we first got our deal with Shady, we got a song called “Session One” on one of Em’s projects. He was trying to put the group on one of his projects. I think that was gonna be a bonus cut or something on one of the albums. We were new to the label, he shared his platform with the group. We did “Session One”. And all Slaughterhouse fans know, Joe Budden isn’t on “Session One”. Why isn’t Joe on “Session One”? Joe was signed to another label and caught up in some paperwork. He was signed to Amalgam Digital. They called over to Shady like, “Hey, we have him under contract. You have to get a clearance from us to have him appear on the song”.We were like, wait a minute. Because all of us went in supposedly free agents to sign this deal with Shady. And come to find out Joe was on the paperwork, he said that they forged his signature and that it wasn’t him. And the group was put on the shelf for a minute while he was fighting Amalgam Digital in court, and we were waiting on Joe because we couldn’t move forward. Here we are, with a brand new deal with Shady Records, and we can’t even move forward as a group because we gotta wait on Joe in court. And that took months. After the signature expert determined that that was his signature on the contract, we was able to figure out how to move forward.
KXNG Crooked was polite not to call it a sabotage and did not touch on the topic of Joe deceiving his friends and the label. But this is how he is. Crook tells his side of the story without throwing offences, but his words hold a resonant truth.
