The Griselda music label has been dominating the rap genre over the last couple years with consistently great and frequent releases. When it comes to rap a lot of times it’s a choice between quantity or quality, but Griselda has found a way to accomplish both. This trend continues with Conway the Machine’s latest album “From King to a GOD.”
Conway has already dropped one of the best albums of 2020 with “LULU,” that had one of the best singles of the year with “Shoot Sideways” featuring production from The Alchemist and lyrics from ScHoolboy Q. Conway also lent his lyrics for features on projects by Freddie Gibbs, Curren$y and will be featured on Juicy J’s upcoming album. If Conway did not drop another album or single the rest of the year, he already would’ve had one of the strongest outputs for 2020 in rap. However, taking the foot off the pedal is not the Griselda style.
The one bad thing about having a roster of artists that drop far more frequently than most artists is that it’s hard to differentiate and find stand-out albums amongst numerous solid releases. When someone only drops great projects and does it at such a high volume it’s difficult to pick and choose what is the best. This is not necessarily a bad problem to have, but it presents a weird situation for any new listener trying to get into the Buffalo, NY collective’s music. However, Conway tries to make this album standout in a way almost no Griselda album has done.
In the intro track “From King” it becomes obvious that “From King to a GOD” has a slightly more commercial sound than almost all of Griselda’s other musical outputs. With that being such a far and stark contrast from the rest of Griselda’s respective sounds, it would be very easy for this endeavor to just fall flat on its face. This album never falls in the trap of trying to shoehorn too many radio-style songs onto the album and instead holds true to the gruff and gritty Griselda tone, despite being an extremely accessible project to listen to throughout.
The quality of features helps in this endeavor. Dej Loaf, Method Man, Lloyd Banks and Freddie Gibbs are just a few of the features on “From King to a GOD,” and none of them fall flat. Griselda artists seem to have a way of elevating artists on their tracks – whether it be the artists previously mentioned or even their own labelmates.
Even the track “Spurs 3” featuring fellow Griselda titans Westside Gunn and Benny the Butcher stands out as one of the best tracks the three have appeared on together – and that’s a decent-sized list.
Other tracks like “Seen Everything but Jesus” and “Juvenile Hell” are probably the most successful results of this general experiment as they are the most-true to the almost-grimy Griselda sound while being songs I could genuinely see on any type of rap fan’s playlist.
Though the two tracks are the standouts, no track fully abandons one in favor of the other in terms of the obvious accessibility. This album is gunning forward compared to the trademark sound of the collective that has come to represent the rap scene in Buffalo, NY.
“From King to a GOD” is the most balanced form of rap that Griselda has put out, and it finally gives the collective a body of work that can be shown to any style of rap fan as a starting point to getting into the label’s music. On that level, this album is the greatest success of the group.
“From King to a GOD” gets a 9/10
Teren Kowatsch can be reached at [email protected]