Slaughterhouse's Royce Da 5'9 has confirmed recent speculation that his rap group will be officially joining Eminem's Shady Records.
"We gonna make the official announcement and probably have a few release parties," Royce revealed in an interview. "It should probably be done in a week or two I'm guessing. It was kinda mutual, I inquired about it, I sat down with Paul [Rosenberg] and it just so happened Em was listening to the album and was saying such great things about it and once it got on his radar, you know how Em is. Once something gets on his radar, that's it. He decided he wanted to pull the trigger on it, he's gonna pull the trigger on it. We were just overwhelmed because he knew how good I was, in his own mind, -- but I don't think he knew how good Crooked, Joell and Joey was and then that four-group dynamic, I just think he looked at it as it was refreshing to hip-hop, the same way we looked at it...I think it's going to put us in a position that shows people we can be successful on a mainstream level too. I feel like we conquered the underground -- we got an opportunity to reach a broader audience together." ("On-Air Idiots")
Earlier this week, Joe Budden said the crew were on the verge of signing. "Naturally we want to be there," Budden said about heading to Shady Records. "I think we'll fit in. There's negotiating but I really don't want to talk about it because everybody's been through so much when you promise things and they're presented to you and they don't go through for whatever reason. I think it's done enough for us to go ahead and say it's just about done...Ultimately, Joe Budden wants to be unsigned. I don't want to be signed to anyone. I don't want to have any contractual obligations anywhere. I want to have Slaughterhouse riding with Eminem and everybody over there and I just want to be [unsigned.]" ("On Air Idiots")
Royce Da 5'9 previously detailed the importance of having their next move by joining a major label. "Right now, the focus is the group," Royce explained in an interview. "I'm focused on the group in terms of the next move, like with signing. Yeah, Shady is an option, there's a lot of great conversations being had and hopefully something like that could happen. Our goal is to put the group album on a major and get the real machine behind it so we can get that balance back in hip-hop." (Sound Session)
Royce also confirmed plans to drop a follow-up project to the group's self-titled 2009 debut last year. "It's like, everything is so hypothetical right now," he said in an interview. "See like right now we're talking as if things are a definite...We already agreed that we're gonna do another album. That's our decision. It's our decision on how much music we wanna do. Now, in terms of where it's gon' be at, we can't make that decision 'cause we can't sign ourselves. The only thing we can do is put ourselves in the position to build up some type of interest."
