Royce visited Crook’s Corner for the second time this year to wrap 2019 up and discuss hip-hop, his new album and their shared past.
Royce seemed to stay friends with his old bandmates from Slaughterhouse even after they parted ways. Isn’t it awkward to be friends with Joe Budden and with Eminem, two people who still have unresolved issues, asked him KXNG Crooked. The answer was long but honest and full of the attitude that makes Royce an extraordinary figure in the hip-hop community:
I don’t really feel awkward, honestly. Maybe a little bit in the beginning, because Joe was being a dickhead in the beginning and that’s the only thing I felt awkward about. Joe is my friend, I love Joe. I do that with everybody I love, I take the good with the bad. Positives outweigh negatives then we got something. When it turns into anything else then I need to make a decision. But nothing else outside of that fuels that decision. My perspective has always been just to do the right thing. That’s what I always do. Everything is not always a business decision. Sometimes you just have to do the right thing. With Joe I expressed how I felt about what he said about Marshall. I don’t like people talking about my friends just like I don’t like people talking about him. We talked about it and we had a conversation about it. We did a little bit of back-and-forth debating and it ended with “Yo man, I’m sorry. I’m sorry and I love you and I didn’t mean to make you feel like that”. I said, “You know what, brother, I accept your apology”. And that’s what we have to do as men. Doing his show I would have actually felt weird not doing his show know that he was expecting me to do a show. Complex didn’t want to give him what he thought he was worth. And he felt like he knew his worth. Even when a lot of people were probably watching and had their everyday struggle they were probably like, “Shit, man, that shit can go on without Joe”. They were right, it could. But so was Joe, he was right. Because he went somewhere else and he thrived. All because he believed in himself. And that story right there is exactly what I just explained to you is what needs to be champion in the culture and not swept and the rug, it’s not a small thing, it’s a big deal because it’s not just a win for him, it’s a win for us. Because what happens – they notice a trend and then they try to repeat it with other black people, brown people. That’s more people in position and that’s what we need on our way to ownership. Because at the end of the day it’s our culture. A hundred percent of the revenue generated by us. For that token alone I have to support Joe. And Marshall is not fucking sitting around angry all the time like people think. He totally chill. It’s not like… If I’m disloyal to this person to be loyal to that person is that really being loyal? That’s not even loyalty, that’s some other shit. Don’t ever mix me up with that. I don’t have a room in my heart for hate, holding grudges and shit like that. That’s not a part of who I am.
Watch the video below:
