**THIS STORY APPEARS IN THE JUNE 2012 ISSUE OF XXL.

WORDS KRIS EX
IMAGES CHRISTOPHER BEYER

Dominick "Crooked I" Wickliffe and Joell Ortiz are on a balcony of the Grafton on Sunset, a boutique hotel on L.A.'s Sunset Strip. For Wickliffe, who grew up 45 minutes away in Long Beach, it’s a homecoming (of sorts); for Ortiz, it’s a glimpse of a possible future (of sorts). The hotel proudly and non-ironically markets itself as “meant for the dreamers, the rock stars, the hipsters and you,” which is the sort of the glamorous douchebaggery that makes L.A. L.A. “I might just stay here,” says Ortiz, before adding as clarification, “in Hollywood.” Full stop. Then: “They want me to read for scripts, all types of shit. Like, dude, it’s unbelievable. Like, other shit, bro—other shit.”

It’s the first time in the past hour that Ortiz, a first generation Puerto Rican-American who was raised in the pre-gentrified wastelands of Brooklyn’s East Williamsburg (Cooper Park Houses, to be exact), has seemed genuinely agog. Much like the rap persona that’s made him one of the more engaging personas putting words over beats on the current music scene, he’s been occasionally pensive, consistently boisterous, sometimes defensive, always forthcoming and pretty hilarious. But now there’s a pure and somewhat heavy wonder as he thinks about the future of his career: “How do you think Joell on Shady would look, though? After Slaughterhouse?”

You want to tell him it seems to be a fait accompli, because Slaughterhouse—the quartet he forms with Wickliffe, Joe Budden and Ryan Montgomery, aka Royce Da 5’9”—is already signed to Marshall Mathers’ Shady Records. And even though “the phones haven’t stopped ringing [with requests] for Joell [to go] independent” from the “big dogs,” Ortiz’s “free-agent” status doesn’t fool anyone. Once Slaughterhouse’s drops welcome to: Our House—their major label debut, which should easily fulfill the promise of the group’s self-titled independent release from 2009—Ortiz will most likely announce his individual affiliation with Shady and/or Andre “Dr. Dre” Young’s Aftermath (where he was once signed), or some other situation secured under the umbrella of Jimmy Iovine’s Interscope Records. But that’s from the outside looking in.

From the inside, it’s a different look. From the inside, Ortiz is a guy who was academic enough to skip the ninth grade, only to turn down a full basketball scholarship to college in order to help get his mom off drugs, only to start selling drugs himself when his high-school girlfriend became pregnant with his first son. From the inside, he’s a guy that’s been on the periphery of rap success for over a decade. In between releasing independent albums, mixtapes and a 12-inch vinyl (going by the stage name Quikman, he released music with Philadelphia rapper Pretty Ugly on Rawkus Records about a dozen years ago). He was recruited by Dr. Dre—a man considered by many to be hip-hop’s greatest producer, past or present—in 2006 only to be told his Aftermath debut would have to wait until after the release of Young’s next album, Detox, which (even then) had been “coming soon” almost as long as Ortiz himself had been rapping. “That wasn’t the best business move for me,” Ortiz confesses. “So I asked Mr. Young if we could part ways, and he played ball all the way. He expressed how much a plan he had for me as an artist—he wanted me to sit tight, but he understood and he allowed me to shake free.”

This explains why Ortiz is not pressed about details of the release of his next album. He says it’s tentatively titled after his personal catcall, mantra and nickname: Yaowa. But as for: “Where? I don’t know and I don’t care. When? I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m really focused on Slaughterhouse right now. I really don’t know what’s going to happen, but I love it.”

As well he should. By signing Slaughterhouse and treating the act as a priority, Eminem—undoubtedly one of wordsport’s greatest technicians, who also just happens to be one of rap’s most commercially dependable figures—has done the improbable, the absurd and the unexpected (which, if you think about it, is exactly what you’d expect him to do): He’s given a group of guys who view rap in the primary colors of poetry, substance and slick talk a seat at the big boys’ table, where conversations about art, meaning and form are rare and cursory. Even the marquee names that get credited as being word connoisseurs aren’t purebred verbal demons à la Slaughterhouse: Jay-Z is a hustler-turned-businessman who doesn’t use a pen, Lil Wayne is a Martian, The Notorious B.I.G. is dead. But Slaughterhouse are rappity-rap rappers’ rappers who are also your favorite street rappers’ favorite rappity rappers. They’re the kids who grew up too smart to care about being cool yet were too street- savvy to ever be nerds and too outside the lines to fit into any box. Which is why, when they came into adulthood and got major-label record deals, they found themselves exiled to the Island of Misfit Toys known as Internets. The fact that they’re still alive at all is a wonder.

“I think it’s just a testament,” says Crooked I. “You have to have an inspiration on every level. You’re gonna be inspired by the dude who goes straight to the league; you gon’ be inspired by the motherfucker who had to work his ass off to get to the league. If I happen to be the guy who has to work his ass off, I’m cool with that, because I know that somebody out there is gonna wanna fuckin’ give up, but then they’re gonna remember, Well, it took this dude this amount of time and he finally got his shine. I remember Bun B told me a couple of years ago, ‘This has been my biggest year in my whole career.’ And I’m like, ‘Damn, you been in the game a looong time, dawg.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah. Imagine if I woulda stopped before this year.’”

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Ortiz and Wickliffe met about five years ago at the photo shoot for the cover of XXL’s inaugural Freshmen issue. (Despite having never released a major-label album, Wickliffe has appeared on the cover of XXL three times, which should qualify him for some sort of an award in and of itself.) Not only were they positioned next to one another, but Ortiz and Wickliffe’s stories were laid next to each other inside the magazine. Add to this the fact that Wickliffe was once signed to Marion “Suge” Knight’s Death Row Records (the rival of Aftermath, Ortiz’s former home) and you’re likely to see the hand of God everywhere. Which may explain why Wickliffe doesn’t take his present circumstances for granted. He knows that with a simple shimmy of fate, he could’ve been on the other end of the phone call he just missed—the one coming from a smuggled phone inside of a federal penitentiary where an associate of his is serving an eight-year term. It’s a side of Wickliffe’s life that is alluded to but rarely given light.

“I don’t give a fuck about that shit on the streets,” he says. “I give a fuck about making music. A lot of the shit I did illegally to get money was to stay relevant in hip-hop—because it costs money to stay relevant in hip-hop. That means I might have to record 52 songs and give them all away for free, just to get my buzz up. How I’ma pay the rent meanwhile? If you peek over that balcony right there, my two daughters are sitting right over there,” he says motioning to the hotel pool. “How I’ma feed them?”

Crooked’s lyrical styling revolves around intricate multisyllabic alliteration and assonance. Like much of his output, his defining body of work—the groundbreaking “Hip-Hop Weekly,” a series of 52 freestyles delivered over the course of the year—was geared towards dismantling outmoded stereotypes of California MCs as gangstafied storytellers and mellow marijuana hedonists. “The mind frame of a lot of my freestyles was to prove that the bars are right, and I’m coming from the West Coast,” he says. “I was just flexing on niggas’ beats just to show niggas that a nigga got rhyme skills. You know—the technique is correct. I come from the same cloth as Rakim, Kool G Rap, KRS-One, Ice Cube, D.O.C.”

His words sum up what may be Slaughterhouse’s raison d’être: word wizardry at all cost—a worthy and necessary ideal that is too often cobbled by pedanticism and pedagogy. At best, such rap can be an entertaining loss-leader; at worst, an impersonal and meandering trip through a labyrinth of unnecessary self-acknowledgement.

“I gotta disagree,” says Ortiz of such thoughts. “On the first album you got to see what Crooked I is, you got to see what Joell Ortiz is, you got to see Joe Budden and Royce Da 5’9”. Now you get to see the collective and we finally get to give y’all that by sharing our stories—but we sharing them with each other too at the same time. I walked away from one of the records that Crook laid a verse on like, Word? So what you think the fan gon’ do? Like, I’m a fan of him, I know Crooked, but I didn’t know this particular thing. And the same with Joe and Royce. [With this album], you’ll understand who Dominick is, who Ryan is, who Joseph is and who Joell is.”

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Slaughterhouse is a machine. And today that means while Joell Ortiz and Crooked I are conducting the interview you just read, Joe Budden and Ryan “@RoyceDa59” Montgomery are getting haircuts in a smoky hotel room, courtesy of @JoeBudden, whose nicotine habit is so ingrained that he travels with cartons (not packs) of menthol cigarettes and regularly violates the no-smoking regulations of many establishments. This doesn’t seem to bother @RoyceDa59, who is engaged in an endearing bromance with @JoeBudden.

“He acts almost like a life coach to me,” @JoeBudden, dressed in the same boho getup of worn wifebeater, designer lounge pants and Uggs slippers that he’s been walking the streets of L.A. in, says of @RoyceDa59 while gingerly folding some preppy thug clothes on his bed. “That’s just the bond that we’ve developed. This is my nigga. Listen, if I never rap another day in life and vice versa—that’s my nigga.”

It’s ironic that @JoeBudden and @RoyceDa59 would have such a close friendship, seeing as the roots of the group can be traced back to a musical feud between the two that was played out mostly via YouTube. When asked who won the battle, @JoeBudden quickly points out, “We did”—then he and @RoyceDa59 giggle like schoolchildren and slap palms. (Royce does concede that Joe “out-Internetted” him.) The easy camaraderie between the two is something that seems interchangeable among any and all configurations of Slaughterhouse’s members. They all share the same alpha maleness, the same self-deprecating and brash sense of humor, and just as often than not, they’ll answer questions in the same way at the same time in some sort of unrehearsed symphony. The sense of kinship between this brotherhood of outcasts is uncommon among men, let alone rappers. Onstage, they alternately support and poke fun at each other’s styles, weight and hometowns. In Episode 4 of their welcome to: Our House vlog series, @JoeBudden challenges Ortiz to a feat of strength by playfully calling him a “fuckin’ fat fuck” in front of the crowd. But the two also collaborate for a routine where Ortiz does a pitch-perfect rendition Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)” while Budden lip-syncs.

***

The intangible ties that bind Slaughterhouse are beyond their shared histories as major-label exiles. It’s a connection so deep that @RoyceDa59—who, as half of Bad Meets Evil, re- leased last year’s gold-selling Hell: The Sequel and was undoubtedly instrumental in getting the group signed by his friend/rhyme partner/label boss—doesn’t mind that he doesn’t have a copy of the Slaughterhouse album and only gets to hear it in Em’s presence.

“Eminem doesn’t give us copies of our own music,” he says of the man who has been mixing the 40-plus tracks recorded for the album in their hometown of Detroit. “I think the hackers and the leakers really kind of did something to him mentally, so he’s very overprotective of our music. Our project is his baby, too. We trust his judgment. Whenever we can listen to it, I’m always blown away by it. Picture the way that we rap over the biggest sounding production that you can think of. And I think that’s always what we needed, even as individuals.”

A chance at a “dream fulfilled” is not something @RoyceDa59 takes lightly. “Yesterday was my 10-year wedding anniversary and we had some radio interviews,” he shares. “I have my wife out here with me and I wanted to miss radio, just so I could spend a couple of hours with her because women like memories. Ten-year anniversary, I want her to be able to remember something—other than we had a show tonight.” Still, he went ahead with the schedule, even though the other Slaughterhousers gave him permission to take the night off. “At the end of the day if it’s not successful, I don’t want to look at myself like it was something that I didn’t do.”

To this end, @JoeBudden and @RoyceDa59, with disarming sincerity, requested that their Twitter handles be included in this story. “My whole career is based off eliminating the middle man, whether that be retail, whether that be the label—just making it me and the fans,” says @JoeBudden, a New Jersey–bred former Def Jam inmate whose seemingly endless online videos have chronicled everything from the genesis of Slaughterhouse, physical altercations with other rappers and deeply personal conversations with his romantic partners. “Whether it’s MySpace, Twitter, chat rooms, hip-hop sites, I try to always engage. And the more followers I have, the more I can engage without the middleman. So if the label decides to just up and leave at the drop of a dime, it’s fine—I have my people.”

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Slaughterhouse is a machine. And today that means that in addition to everything you’ve just read, the group is also overseeing rough cuts of the video for welcome to: Our House’s first single, “Hammer Dance,” glad-handing DJs, juggling responsibilities to family members and significant others, making liquor runs and more—all before a scheduled performance in front of a sold-out crowd. In a perfect world, this story ends with how the group’s professionalism, earned through years of hard knocks, allows them to rise above such time-management issues with poise. But a perfect world wouldn’t be as interesting as the truth.

As the group pulls up to the night’s venue, they’re not only so late to take the portraits you see here that the photographer threatens to leave—they’re so late that fans (including some two dozen who paid $100 each for a pre-show meet-and-greet opportunity) are lined up outside the door as the foursome makes its way into the venue. Inside, the group takes collective shots in what may be the quickest photo session in the history of this magazine, while fans poke their heads into the backdrop. As they split up for solo options, their manager begins running through an hours-late sound check for the night’s performance. As sound-checking a venue is an involved process requiring the performers’ inputs, Royce Da 5’9” runs through his verse of “Sound Off,” the night’s opening number. While Joell Ortiz, who rhymes second, performs his lines, Joe Budden, with the composure and presence of a fashion model and rock star, stays by the theater’s doors and begins posing for his photos. By the time Crooked I, who rhymes third on the song, hits the stage, Joe is bent over and violently retching his insides into a garbage can. No one knows what’s happened yet; Joe, despite the sweating and the heaving and the kneeling, is giving the most controlled demonstration of upchucking you could imagine. And, by the time he’s needed onstage, he’s there, microphone in hand, rapping—“My one goal’s to astonish...”—like it’s business as usual.

When asked later what happened, he matter-of-factly says, “I threw up.” Asked about his ability to bounce back, he deadpans, “I’m a professional.”

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