Slaine had just finalized his divorce and was feeling down when he was in the studio with his friend Richie Skam. Their conversation started with Slaine listing some of his shortcomings.
"I was saying how I'm not detail oriented,” Slaine says in an exclusive statement to HipHopDX. "I drink too much, don't file my taxes on time, don't open my mail, bills, keep my appointments, take care of my teeth, and so on and so on. He looks at me like he wants to smack me upside the head and says, ‘Yeah, but you're the king of everything else.' I burst into laughter when he said it, and I realized I not only had my new album title but the concept and direction for it, too."
Slaine says that he was able to channel his life experiences into his lyrics in a new way on The King Of Everything Else.
"I was at the end of the most difficult times of my life and had just come off of a five-year period that had seen me go from living in a warehouse with no hot water or electricity to touring the world, sharing the stage with icons, working with legendary producers and emcees, putting out albums, making a few major studio movies and becoming almost a household name in the city that I'm from,” he says. "I realized that the music I was making up to that point had propelled me out of the streets, addiction, violence and chaos, but that I had brought all those things with me into my new life. This album is a picture of that. It is as brutally honest and introspective as all my stuff to date, but is in a different context. The result is it is a lot more fun and energetic. It is not quite as heavy emotionally. I'd say its a combination of Hunter S. Thompson and Chris Farley. It is still dark, but in a very entertaining way.”