Back in April, Slaughterhouse member Joell Ortiz announced the title of his next solo studio album, House Slippers and recently released a single for the project of the same name.
Slated to release his third go around later this year, Joell has been making the press rounds as of late and recently talked with Crazy Hood about the project and his career.
When asked about the change of his album title from Yaowa to House Slippers Joell said after 2012, he decided to change up his personal routine and found he looked at life differently.
“I wanted to lose weight. I just wanted to become a better person,” he said. “Through that—through losing weight and stop smoking cigarettes and slowed down heavily on drinking, I started seeing things differently. Literally, I started feeling different. It’s like my eyes opened up; it wasn’t so cloudy in that Rock star life. It wasn’t alcohol, and girls in the back of the bus, and things like that. It’s just grown and mature, like, “Yo, you’ve got to do this.” ‘Cause I honestly feel like this is a very important album for me. It took 18 months and I lost almost 100 pounds. I really sat with myself and started learning more things about myself. And then, I just started writing. I wasn’t even recording, I was just writing about my day-to-day, ideas, what I want to do, what I want to accomplish—not even rhymes, just writing and keeping the pen moving. So I’d write a song or two and then [go to record it]. It was very, very, very organic.”
AD LOADING...
He went on to talk about the concept of the album explaining he feels comfortable with who he is now, hence the title. He also tells Crazy Hood that this was the album he wanted to make–without any outside influence.
“The way I came up with House Slippers was, when I listen to the album, I’m not afraid, man,” he said. “I’m very comfortable with myself. I don’t care what anybody’s gonna think. This is the first time I can honestly say that. I don’t care if they go, “Word? That happened?” or “He’s okay with sayin’ that?” I don’t care! In so many ways, this album is only for me. But I swear it’s gonna be for everybody who feels like me. Once I found my comfortable place as a human being, I wanted to find a name that equated that comfort. When are you most comfortable, Joell? Sitting on my couch, in my house slippers, with the remote in my hand, just doing what I want to do.”
Joell Ortiz also talked about his relationship with radio and says his placement on regional radio was due to relationships rather than music that attempted to sound mainstream.
“I’ve never had a national [added song to radio],” he said when asked about radio’s influence on fanhood. “I’ve never had something that was just playing on every station… It was always just me being out and about, DJs lovin’ me, or me hittin’ the grind, or me passin’ my joints out outside of the station and things like that. That relationship or that grind led to a few look-out’s here and there.”
AD LOADING...
Read the full interview here.
