Joell Ortiz’s House Slippers, which is available now, gave Ortiz an opportunity to record while sober, something he says was refreshing.
“There’s a high that comes along with being sober,” Ortiz says in an interview with XXL‘s Eric Diep, specifically discussing the project’s title track. “People don’t realize that. Someone who has been sober all their life, can’t enjoy the high as someone who has been drinking and been messing up. That’s like a whole enlightenment like, ‘Oh, remember this?’ That’s how I was in the studio. There was just so much going in my mind.”
Joell Ortiz Says Free Agent Rollout Was “Horrendous”
House Slippers also signifies a different type of positive evolution for Ortiz, who says that it helped him make up for what he felt was a terrible roll out for Free Agent, the emcee’s previous project.
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“I feel like with the last rollout [for Free Agent], it was horrendous,” he says. “It was not a good time. A lot of disappointment, an album leaking way before. You know, miscommunication between the label and retailers and websites. It was just horrible. Slaughterhouse came right on time for me. It was just like, ‘Alright, cool. A new way to continue doing what I love in a brand new fresh, breath of air. Alright, cool. I’m still active. Joell Ortiz is still here and still doing what he does.’ This album, House Slippers, is a chance for me to be like, ‘Remember my last outing? Ha!’ [Laughs] ‘Here’s a new offering, guys.’ I didn’t like the way it happened, and I loved the way this is happening. It’s good. It’s like a second chance at a second chance because that was the second album.”
In a September 8 HipHopDX interview with Jay Balfour, Ortiz referred to Free Agent as a “disaster.”
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