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[Photo via Snapgod]

Westside Gunn's 10 is a respectful nod to the legends who paved the way

Eastside Flip can be found on Bailey Avenue in east Buffalo, freestyling and peddling cash off strangers. Flip is a local fiend who happens to be a gifted MC and offers a freestyle for the outro of “God is Love,” a track featured on Westside Gunn’s new album, 10. He pridefully raps, “Envy in us n*ggas, that’s jealously, all hate/You’re desperate to see a n*gga upstate.” It’s a harrowing reminder that Flip is a victim of Buffalo’s neglect and marginalization of Black people on its east side. As of last year, Buffalo is the third poorest city in the country, with a poverty rate of 27.6%. 

A photograph of Eastside Flip is used for the artwork for 10, and on it, he’s in a bodega, wearing an orange Buffalo and black varsity sweater, a black beanie and what one can assume is a $500,000 worth of jewelry. He’s sporting a diamond-encrusted watch on his left wrist and a matching bracelet on the right, but most notable is the Westside DOOM chain that Gunn had crafted in tribute to the late MF DOOM. It’s a stark contrast between Flip’s tired and drawn facial expression and the immortal illumination of the gleaming VVS’ he’s wearing. For Westside Gunn, it’s a reminder of his roots; it’s staying connected to the people and environment that helped shape his character. 

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In 2012, after a stint in prison that kept him away from music for several years, Westside Gunn, with his brother Conway The Machine, co-founded Griselda Records by Fashion Rebels, a collective centralized on streetwear fashion and music that called back to NYC’s golden age. Hitler Wears Hermes was the first Griselda release, with the name being a play on the film The Devil Wears Prada. Gunn put everything into Hitler Wears Hermes, also shouldering responsibility for his family and friends. “I had a baby on the way and focused on how I would get my next dollar ‘cause I was still hustling. I was only out of prison one year, and Conway just got shot in the head,” he says. “That was a crazy time then, but I came with the raw shit ever since.”

Fittingly, 10 marks the 10th anniversary and the final installment of the Hitler Wears Hermes series. “10 is perfect for it. I’m not big on numbers. I also don’t want to keep doing 11, 12 and 30; I can’t believe I made it for 10, but it makes all the sense in the world, man. It’s a complete series now, I feel, and I don’t even need it. There’s no other better way I can end the scene,” Gunn says.

The production stands out on 10, featuring beats from the legends who crafted Westside Gunn’s musical palette, such as Pete Rock, Swizz Beatz, Alchemist and RZA. The latter, who produces the intro, is someone Gunn reveres. “I always had the utmost respect for him, and I always said that he was the guy on the top of the mountain for me. Just as I grew in this shit, I started earning the respect of every member of the Wu-Tang Clan. It wasn’t a featuring Westside Gunn thing. It was a respect thing. So it was mutual. I got nothing but love for them. They got nothing but love for me.”

Compositions on the album also come courtesy of Conductor Williams, Camoflauge Monk, Mike Shabb, Elijah Hooks and Denny Laflare. Monk has been crafting beats for Gunn and the rest of Griselda since day one, with production that often contains stretched and distorted samples, snapping snares and percussion and heavy basslines that call back to the wall-rattling boom-bap of the ‘90s.

Camoflauge Monk has been engineering for Griselda since Gunn’s Hitler Wears Hermes 2. The release was finished in a single day, with Gunn already having beats from Daringer. Aside from engineering work, Gunn didn’t know Monk produced beats. Being both from Buffalo, Monk and Gunn connected instantly through music and repping the same city. Needing a place to record, they decided on using Monk’s studio to finish the project.

“We have never looked back. Monk was around me so much, and he was listening to those Daringer beats so much, we were creating a Griselda sound,” he reflects. “So Monk was making shit tailored from him being with me every day. He knew what I liked, so he only cooked what I liked. So it just sounded crazy. And I think now it’s people hearing Monk, more people hearing Daringer and people hearing Griselda, it’s like now producers are making these beats to be able to give it to Conway or me or Benny.”

Westside Gunn has proved to be a master curator through the years. On Hitler Wears Hermes, he offers Griselda space to newcomers and friendly neighbors in the rap game. On 10, he enlists Raekwon and Ghostface Killah, Busta Rhymes, Black Star (Mos Def and Talib Kweli), A$AP Rocky, DJ Drama and the rest of the Griselda roster to deliver verses on the project. “Science Class” is 10’s hip-hop fever dream. Gunn joins Griselda ally Stove God Cooks, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah and Busta Rhymes, where Busta leads with a bone-crushing performance. “When Swizz Beatz played me that, the first person I thought of in my mind was Buster,” he says. Swizz Beatz executes drums and keys that call back to ‘90s rap, wrapped in a loop from Margo Guryan’s “The 8:17 Northbound Success Merry-Go-Round.” There couldn’t have been a more significant moment for Gunn musically.

“Of course, I know them, but we never made music. Knowing somebody and respecting somebody and having love for somebody, that’s one thing. But when you could come together and make the music, that’s different. It’s a lot of people that I love, but we just never made music. Did you know Young Dolph was my favorite rapper? That’s one of them people I loved; I had love for Dolph and didn’t even know him. His music touched me every time,” Gunn says, the passion speaking volumes in his voice. 

The Buffalo MC regrets not being able to make music with the late Memphis rapper. Even though they came from different cities, Gunn resonated with the way he carried himself. “I would’ve loved to do that,” he says. “But Ghostface is one of the people where it’s like that was my childhood. In hip-hop, Ghost and Rae made me wanna rhyme. The two together were the ultimate. We were dying our fucking Walabees half and half and wearing rugs and Nautica jackets and shit like that ‘cause we looked up to Wu. So to be able to do a song with them is surreal. It’s the ultimate respect.” 

The songs on 10, for Gunn, are signs of respect to the OGs who paved the way for him and his artists. “I fucking love Run the Jewels. I love El-P. I used to listen to Weathermen, Company Flow, everything. Nobody else in the hood was listening to that but me,” he recalls. An audience for underground rap in Buffalo was nonexistent, yet Gunn followed the genre religiously. “I was such an advanced man that I was listening to everything. And motherfuckers east side of Buffalo, they weren’t up on Madlib. It had to be on radio, 106 & Park, MTV or some shit like that. There was no underground in the hood.”

However, Gunn was a part of a hip-hop underground club in Buffalo with exclusive members. Out of the whole city of Buffalo, only an estimated 150 people attended the club, which Gunn says was a selective group. “Out of the 150 people, I was there. So the shit I was listening to and the instrumentals that we were trying to rap on, nobody else didn’t even know where the beats came from. I was just ahead of the game,” he confidently says. 10 is a full-circle moment for Gunn, rapping alongside the legends who inspired him. “I can’t thank them enough. Every time I see him for the rest of my days, I will thank him for that shit. ‘Cause 10 is a masterpiece.”

10 is also the sequel to last year’s Hitler Wears Hermes 8 Sides A & B, which Gunn has previously stated would be his final installment, and Peace “Fly” God, released this past July. While working on his new imprint, Michelle Records, in Paris with Stove God, and Fly God Jr., the “feeling” came to Gunn like an epiphany. 

“I made one record. I’m like, ‘Nah, this is the Hitler Wears Hermes feel.’ The Michelle Records stuff sounds really elegant — it got its own sound to it,” he explains. Gunn even teased the production by posting snippets on his Instagram stories, in turn spurring praise, anticipation and mashups. “But when I made this one record, it was like, ‘Wait a minute, this is it.’ Then I made another one,” he continues. “I knew right then and there it was just the energy. I finished it so fast, and it didn’t take long. So once I was done, I did it. I already knew I had a classic. Because the energy was so high, I wanted to prove to everybody that I had just dropped Peace “Fly” God. But it was more like, let me throw something out there for the culture, just an art piece and have on all my catalog that show people that I’m one of the dopest in the game. But I approached it more artistically, musically. But this one, it was the music.”

Gunn continues, taking this opportunity to declare himself untouchable in the rap game: “First of all, let’s start just at the beginning of the album and go from RZA to my son. How legendary is that? I’m proud of that. Most of the whole album is like LeBron playing with Brony. You rarely see that being able to play on the same team or King Griff junior senior type shit. But then I also have Run the Jewels, and who can have them and Black Star on the same album in 2022? And you still got Alchemist and Pete Rock all on one album. I got Swizz Beatz with Raekwon and Ghostface in 2022. Right now, there’s nobody in the industry that sounds like Westside Gunn. Nobody.”

Gunn’s only competition is his 9-year-old daughter, Westside Pootie, who’s currently in the fourth grade, and featured on “Nigo Louis.” He’s unsure of what she wishes to be when she’s older, but she’s always front row with him for wrestling events, and watching every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. When talking about her and her fantastic track record for shit-talking on his albums, he’s beyond proud. He laughs when being quoted her vibrant insults from previous projects: “P’s a trip, man. She has been with me in this shit since day one. When she was born, I was still trying to find my way. I didn’t have my face on the front cover, so it’s not like people knew who I was. I wasn’t trying to sell the album or the mixtape; I was trying to give them away. So I print up a thousand of them, and I go to the neighborhood to the hood, go to the gas stations, to the hangout, to the closing stores in the hood, liquor stores, all of that shit. It’s just the hustle. The hustle is always in it.”

During the call, Gunn hints at a potential DJ Drama/Gangsta Grillz collaboration “very” soon. “I’m talking about so soon, you don’t understand,” he teases. He also says the highly anticipated Griselda debut from Stove God Cooks is on the horizon, but everyone needed to hear Stove God “kill him” on tracks first. “I need you to hear Stove killing shit. I have been having Stove kill my shit on purpose for three years straight,” he says, laughing. Naturally, with the completion of 10, they are in the midst of a Stove album. “After I did 10, it was time for us to come back and strike again,” Gunn adds. “We did Kiss the Ring with Rome. Armani dropped Liz 2. I dropped 10. Now, it’s time for Stove to go crazy and smoke them that way, too.”

As crucial to Gunn as his family is his fans, who’ve supported him throughout his career. He desires to boost up the underground, and for him, it’s impossible without the fanbase he’s built with his Griselda label. “It ain’t about the money; it’s about the awareness, and these mainstream motherfuckers know that the underground is on its way, and I’m carrying the fucking flag. I’m waving the flag.”