Rory Releases ‘I Thought It’d Be Different’ Album with Jay Electronica, Phonte, Ari Lennox & More

blame it on Shake May 26, 2023

New Rory and Mal!

After years of talking about it, Rory has finally released his debut album, I Thought It’d Be Different.

Now, some of you are asking… who tf is Rory? Well, that in itself is a tricky question to answer. There isn’t just one thing you can point to to describe him. From his early days working in marketing at Sony and helping create the once traveling Henny Dussé Palooza party that took over New York (and other cities) a few years back (one that our very own Mek would DJ from time to time) to helping launch The Joe Budden Podcast, before moving on to start his own podcast, New Rory & Mal, the red-headed kid from Jersey also has artist management on his resume as he’s helped guide acts like Emotional Oranges and Chiiild throughout their careers.

Still, whether you’re familiar with Rory or not, it’s safe to say you are quite familiar with the guests on the album… Jay Electronica, Phonte, DVSN, Ari Lennox? Yeah, and that’s just the start.

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“You have a lot of arrogance in your 20s,” Rory says. “You really think you can plan, God willing, the next 50 years of your life. And I don’t know where that arrogance comes from. Maybe it’s a naive thing. But it hit me in a really wild way, coming out of my 20s.

“When I was making this album, I had lost pretty much everything I had worked for. Palooza was gone – with that, left a bunch of friends. A podcast I helped build was now gone – that left with friends. It’s like everything I had known since I was 20 was gone. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. Sometimes, things can just end. It’s great to get toxicity out of your life. It’s great to move on from things, to accomplish things and leave them the f*ck alone.

“But it never really addresses that hole that it may leave. Even thought toxicity was there, it was something that was keeping you whole. And I feel like I used this album at the time in a way to fill that void. Because all that I knew in my 20s was just constantly filling voids that I thought brought me fulfillment.

“I think it’s really important to leave people in certain eras. But when you have to leave yourself in a certain era and start from scratch at who you are, it’s a really odd transition. Cause I can always go find a new career, but I’ve spent the last 10 years making my career myself. So when that’s gone, I’m like f*ck. So that’s where the album title came from. I just hope I’m correct.”

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Locked in at 13 tracks in length, I Thought It’d Be Different comes equipped with features from the names listed above, as well as Conway the Machine, Alex Isley, Kirby, DRAM, Sinead Harnett, Pink Sweat$, Reason, James Fauntleroy, C.S. Armstrong, Hablot Brown, and a few others.