STRENGTHENING THE GRISELDA MOVEMENT WITH RAP LEGEND CO-SIGNS, HATE, AND PERSEVERANCE
https://www.undergroundhiphop.com/m...dy-story-westside-gunn-conways-meteoric-rise/
During the Griselda on Steroids tour stop at New York City’s Webster Hall in June, rap legends including Raekwon, Styles P and Jadakiss, Roc Marciano, and the late Prodigy came to give their props to Westside Gunn, Conway, and Benny. It was a manifestation that Griselda has ascended as the one of the strongest movements to come out of New York State.
Westside Gunn explains why he eschewed the festival circuit in order to be seen as a headliner on his own tour and sell his crew’s GxFR merchandise, which are all the rage amongst his fans:
“The first time I wanted people to see me was our own [Griselda] tour,” he says. “Now I want to do all the festivals, the A3Cs, the SXSW’s, whatever. We could’ve been doing those forever. But it was about first time I want people to people to see me in the flesh, I wanted it to be some shit that we do.”
They don’t take this showing of gratitude for keeping New York’s legacy alive for granted. Benny still believes there is a lot for his cohorts to keep the fight going because of industry shadiness they’ve experienced. “In the industry, Griselda is still taking everything we get,” he adds. “Nobody handed us nothing. You watched the [Funk Flex] freestyle. Flex don’t even wanna fuckin’ crack a smile or he didn’t even want to say, ‘Yo they dope!’ or as soon as we got off the air he exchanged numbers with Conway and told us, ‘People don’t do it in one take like y’all did it.’ He didn’t wanna say nothing on the air because that would be handing us his co-sign because he knows what that means. But it’s too late because we got co-signs from the Jadakiss’s, the Mobbs, Wu-Tang Clans, and all that. We see the shady behavior because of where we’re from.”
Beyond the traditionalist New York sound, Conway recently stepped beyond their comfort zone to show how he can rework the most popular rap songs of the year in Kendrick Lamar’s chart-topping “Humble” to show his artistic range on his most recent mixtape Reject On Steroids.
“I like the record. I was working on Reject On Steroids mixtape and I liked [the beat]. When I do my mixtapes I like fucking with different instrumentals and all of that,” he says. “But I love that [Kendrick album] and that record. When I found that instrumental I said ‘hold on, lemme see how I can play with this one real quick.”
Conway—who’s known for his physical aesthetic, along with his muscular delivery and baritone voice—shows love to wanting to work with more West Coast artists of his element. He states his love of old school R&B artists. “I fuck with ScHoolboy, Kendrick, and MURS. I wanna work with Bobby Brown. I wanna work with Stephanie Mills [laughs].”
Now that Westside Gunn is seeing his hard work finally pay off, he and Conway introduced in March to their fans that they’ve joined forces with Eminem to become the next group act that will revive Shady Records and be the next way under Slim Shady’s watch. But to mark their first song with his camp, they paid their respects by naming their first song for Shady after their fallen comrade Machine Gun Black.
Westside Gunn declared that their music will remain the same in their creative process without having to acquiesce to Eminem’s prototypical sound for crossover appeal.
“It’s still gonna remain Griselda. It don’t matter who you with,” Gunn says. “Shout out to Shady and Interscope. Just keep expecting the grimy, raw shit. Ain’t shit changing at all. Don’t think just because we got signed that we’re about to switch or change our style up. Everything you ever heard is gonna remain the same. The formula’s there. You’re never gonna stop Griselda.”
Westside Gunn explains why he eschewed the festival circuit in order to be seen as a headliner on his own tour and sell his crew’s GxFR merchandise, which are all the rage amongst his fans:
“The first time I wanted people to see me was our own [Griselda] tour,” he says. “Now I want to do all the festivals, the A3Cs, the SXSW’s, whatever. We could’ve been doing those forever. But it was about first time I want people to people to see me in the flesh, I wanted it to be some shit that we do.”
They don’t take this showing of gratitude for keeping New York’s legacy alive for granted. Benny still believes there is a lot for his cohorts to keep the fight going because of industry shadiness they’ve experienced. “In the industry, Griselda is still taking everything we get,” he adds. “Nobody handed us nothing. You watched the [Funk Flex] freestyle. Flex don’t even wanna fuckin’ crack a smile or he didn’t even want to say, ‘Yo they dope!’ or as soon as we got off the air he exchanged numbers with Conway and told us, ‘People don’t do it in one take like y’all did it.’ He didn’t wanna say nothing on the air because that would be handing us his co-sign because he knows what that means. But it’s too late because we got co-signs from the Jadakiss’s, the Mobbs, Wu-Tang Clans, and all that. We see the shady behavior because of where we’re from.”
Beyond the traditionalist New York sound, Conway recently stepped beyond their comfort zone to show how he can rework the most popular rap songs of the year in Kendrick Lamar’s chart-topping “Humble” to show his artistic range on his most recent mixtape Reject On Steroids.
“I like the record. I was working on Reject On Steroids mixtape and I liked [the beat]. When I do my mixtapes I like fucking with different instrumentals and all of that,” he says. “But I love that [Kendrick album] and that record. When I found that instrumental I said ‘hold on, lemme see how I can play with this one real quick.”
Conway—who’s known for his physical aesthetic, along with his muscular delivery and baritone voice—shows love to wanting to work with more West Coast artists of his element. He states his love of old school R&B artists. “I fuck with ScHoolboy, Kendrick, and MURS. I wanna work with Bobby Brown. I wanna work with Stephanie Mills [laughs].”
Now that Westside Gunn is seeing his hard work finally pay off, he and Conway introduced in March to their fans that they’ve joined forces with Eminem to become the next group act that will revive Shady Records and be the next way under Slim Shady’s watch. But to mark their first song with his camp, they paid their respects by naming their first song for Shady after their fallen comrade Machine Gun Black.
Westside Gunn declared that their music will remain the same in their creative process without having to acquiesce to Eminem’s prototypical sound for crossover appeal.
“It’s still gonna remain Griselda. It don’t matter who you with,” Gunn says. “Shout out to Shady and Interscope. Just keep expecting the grimy, raw shit. Ain’t shit changing at all. Don’t think just because we got signed that we’re about to switch or change our style up. Everything you ever heard is gonna remain the same. The formula’s there. You’re never gonna stop Griselda.”