‘It’s insane to think about how effective, and consistent these two have been while they build up Griselda from the New York underground to the literal royalty that the entire Griselda collective have become.‘
-Daniel Reiser
Release date: September 11, 2015 | Griselda Records | Bandcamp | Westside Gunn Instagram | Conway The Machine Instagram
Hip hop is a genre that thrives off mythology – the lore that emerges as established names try to cement their legacy and young, hungry upstarts come for the crown. Today’s ASIR focuses on the latter, as back in 2015, both Westside Gunn and Conway The Machine were coming up in the scene, trying to leave a lasting mark on it with their Griselda crew. Griselda Ghost captures a spark that other hip hop acts try to kindle their entire career.
David Rodriguez
A legacy started here. At least that’s how I saw it.
While Run The Jewels were well underway with their first two albums out, something else was brewing in Buffalo, NY. They ran deeper, came harder, and stayed on everyone’s minds as much as they could with (often too) consistent releases between its members. I’m of course talking about the Griselda crew, later to be more officially known as Griselda Records and its roster.
The prime suspects during this humbler beginning were Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine, and Benny the Butcher, a grimy triumvirate that seemed to channel history’s most brutal and savvy rappers like Onyx, Nas, Jay-Z, even Kool G Rap, but different. Different enough that Griselda is practically its own microgenre of gangster and mafioso rap at this point, stacking newer members and associates like Boldy James, Estee Nack, and Stove God Cooks. If you know rap, then you know Griselda, and you know what they mean and stand for.
While Gunn and Conway were already dropping tapes for rap’s underground to feast on, including Gunn’s signature and often misunderstood Hitler Wears Hermes series, 2015’s Griselda Ghost tape was not only their best tape that year, but also the one that really broke through to a bigger audience and showed the world who the hell they really were, and gave a now legendary and respected underground producer his first big gig, Big Ghost Ltd. This is the first tape that grabbed my attention because I was following Big Ghost and his other endeavors as a realness-first writer and comedic observer of rap culture – if you know, you know, and damn it was good to know.
I certainly hope that Broc and Dan didn’t go too deep into the history like I just did otherwise that was probably pretty boring and redundant to read. I’ll talk about where I was at briefly before getting into the music itself.
You have to understand that in 2015 I was fully back in love with hip-hop. There was a time when I was a teen and young adult where I was all about exploring rock and metal with very little deviation. I was also disillusioned with the state of mainstream rap around the late 2000s which gave me a lot of artists that I just couldn’t connect with like Lil Wayne. But all along, there were little scenes building and barring up online, unleashing around the turn of the decade like Odd Future, Greedhead Music, Mishka Records, shit that spoke to my weird, edgy little soul.
And so we get to Griselda Ghost, a short tape (thankfully, most Griselda projects are mercifully short to compensate for their frequent drops) that executes a grand concept in such a way that it started a whole new wave in rap. Vile boom-bap-ass production from Big Ghost Ltd veiled in wily and opulent raps from Conway and Gunn. Just some of the most poetically violent shit you can hear mixed with a level of success and wealth that’s aspirational for some, unattainable for most, and that’s kind of the point. This is very, very clearly an exaggerated, fantastical apex of the dope boy trope and aesthetic, expertly laid down by two of rap’s most compelling lyricists in the underground.
It makes sense that lately Gunn has taken to incorporating showboating elements of professional wrestling in recent work, and if you think kayfabe sounds a lot like the posturing and studio gangsterism that pervades a lot of rap… well, there’s a video for that. But it’s fun! Like, me, Broc, and Dan just yell quotes from them in a group chat in all caps sometimes, or make up our own Griselda-esque lyrics. It’s fun shit, ridiculously so, but it also speaks to both of their very real lives.
My favorite Griselda member is Conway the Machine without a doubt, but Westside Gunn is a pretty close and confident second because of his unique voice, adlibs, and attitude which seems to have only multiplied over the years. Conway is extravagant when he wants to be, but usually he’s grounded and more traditional with his bars. One of my favorite sections is in “Fendi Seats” and how the rhymes come together with some internal play:
‘N****s got all these fantasies about coke sales
Okay my n***a, whatever make ya boat sail
But me, I don’t speak about the shit I don’t sell
I’m a S.E. G, I don’t ride coattails
All it take is a phone call made
Four goons, four Ks, get ya porch sprayed
I’m just tryna see my name on a Forbes page
My new shit sound like something the Lord made’
Production on this thing is wild as hell. Samples are immaculate without being shit you’ve heard a thousand times before. “Empire” utilizes wailing guitars and understated drums for a punchy penultimate track, “Richer Porter” is rick indeed with sultry horns and a hazy mood, and “If I Ruled the World ‘15” is a bold finish with a soulful air completely with impassioned vocals dangling in the background for Gunn and Conway to disrespect you over.
My favorite though? Maybe a surprise, but it’s “Dutch Masters”, the interlude track that samples The Wire and two Prodigy bars from “Shook Ones Pt. II” pitched down over pensive and beautiful piano and woodwinds, and harmonized vocals from a Lou Bond song, the same sampled on Lil B’s “Whats 100 Dollars” (from his Evil Red Flame tape – another 2010s staple). It’s gentle, but given a new toughened life with the words and context of being on a Griselda tape.
That’s honestly about all of my sale of the tape. I don’t have an overly personal attachment to Griselda Ghost, but I appreciate it so much for being a part of my reintroduction to and true unlocking of my love for hip-hop that’s persevered ever since. There’s only so many times I can listen to Illmatic or Straight Outta Compton after all. This shit’s tough as hell, not to be trifled with, and certainly not for everyone, but the last ten years has been proof positive that when people fuck with Griselda, they really fuck with them. They’ve earned the rep.
Broc Nelson
Let me start by saying that I feel like a Griselda noob. So, by signing up for this feature, I listened to Griselda Ghost for the first time. If you follow my writing, you know that I love hip hop, but the first time I heard Westside Gunn, I wasn’t sold on him. In fact, of all the Griselda crew, Gunn took the longest for me to vibe with, even though he was the first one I heard. That was 2018 with Supreme Blientele. I enjoyed the album enough, but I think I connected with another album with a black and white cover, Denzel Curry’s TA13OO, harder that year and kind of let Westside Gunn fall off of my radar.
Silly-ass move.
My love for hip hop has grown over the last couple of years. Since I left bartending at metal and punk bars, my tastes are dictated by myself, without the social pressure to keep up with the latest in heavy music to keep my playlist fresh. So, it was Westside Gunn & Conway The Machine’s Hall & Nash 2 (2023) that was really the beginning of my newfound love for the Griselda camp. Then 2019’s Griselda group album (Westside Gunn, Conway The Machine, and Benny The Butcher) caught heavy rotation, along with Conway The Machine’s Speshal Machinery: The Ghronic Edition that got me hip to Big Ghost Ltd. Since then, I have followed every Griselda member’s output, and am still playing catch-up with their massive back catalogue. Hell, HEELS HAVE EYES 2 is (for now) in my top 20 favorite albums of 2025.
After all of their success and many releases, hearing one of the first major Griselda releases is an impressive time capsule. First of all, opening with a quote from Freeway Ricky Ross describing, in part, the CIA and United States involvement in the Iran-Contra affair and how arming the Contras helped suppress the Sandinistas and opened up the flow of cocaine from Nicaragua to the United States at the expense of Black lives is raw as hell. I am not sure how many people know this history, but it feels important to understand the levels of depravity and corruption that were ushered in and have stuck around since Ronald Reagan, and beyond. Thematically, Griselda Ghost is nowhere near as political as the intro track, which is followed by chants of ‘¡Libertad!’, but flows right into a dusty boom bap street tale on “Ranbannga”.
The interplay of coke rap, street violence, high fashion, and boasts of wealth are standard content for Griselda, but they do it so well that they deserve mention alongside Clipse, Biggie, and Jay-Z’s best coke bars. Their storytelling is as on-point as their rhymes, and with Westside Gunn’s delivery, I can’t help but be reminded of another one of my favorite coke rap artists, Ghostface Killah. Fishscale was an essential part of my hip hop journey, and of course Supreme Clientele (paid homage on Supreme Blientele), and for as much as I’ve listened to Ghost, it was easy to pick up his influence on Westside Gunn. On top of that, Big Ghost Ltd. is an unkown producer, but is widely assumed to be Ghostface Killah himself. If so, he has some serious chops on display on Griselda Ghost. The jazz boom-bap of “Richer Poorer” is hypnotic. “Brains On The Basquiat” could be a beat on Fishscale or Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (also shout out to Conway for the title line). Over this short album, the beats feel engrossing, immediately transporting you to the kind of beats that helped make Nas and Mobb Deep legends.
I have to give some special attention to Conway The Machine. This dude’s flow drips with precision and enthusiasm. While I tend to feel like Gunn has lost a little bit of his lyricism over the years, favoring crazy boasts and ad libs (still fun as fuck), Conway has only gotten sharper, and his bars on Griselda Ghost are already slick. Gunn holds his own, as well, and the chemistry these two bring out from each other is magnetic. They are half-brothers, furthering the Clipse comparison, though it is hard to sound tighter than Pusha T and Malice, Conway and WSG have their own brand of product, maybe cooked up in a microwave, stamped and ready to hook those open minded enough to listen, even, if like me, it takes a little while to come around to this stellar example of hip hop classicism.
Daniel Reiser
I had the opportunity to watch Terrence Crawford ascend the throne of the greatest boxer alive this past weekend. For Crawford’s entire career, he came to the sport with a focus on study, determination, and steadily ratcheting up the ante one fight at a time to become the greatest to ever do it. With that commitment to study, focus, and confidence anything can be achieved. This equally covers the two Buffalo, NY brothers that have ascended and preserved the rap throne. Westside Gunn and Conway The Machine have left in their wake nearly a thousand tracks that almost if not always capture lightning in a bottle time and time again. It’s insane to think about how effective, and consistent these two have been while they build up Griselda from the New York underground to the literal royalty that the entire Griselda collective have become. They are unequivocally the essence and zeitgeist of what makes rap great.
Griselda Ghost is testament to that. With the faceless and enigmatic prolific producer Big Ghost laying down nine amazing production that harkens back to boom bap golden age production, adding more potency and shine to it, while effectively giving the most eerie keys and samples available, the two greatest to ever do it trade bars in an exchange that’s not even competitive, since that’s never been their speed, but doing it just for the art of rap.
From the first glorious ‘ayo’ on “Rhabenga” slicing through the cryptic, eerie production Big Ghost churns for both Gunn and Con to present their proof of concept for the neo-boom bap era, everything comes into focus and you see the unfolding of an easy top tier rap album that can be argued as perfect. Hip hop fans have long been celebrating another set of coke rap brothers with Clipse, and another set of boom bap veterans in the Wu Tang Clan, as both are rap royalty in their own right, but Griselda’s Hall & Nash connect the dots between the two, solidifying their reign of your favorite rappers favorite rappers, never dropping off in quality across 100+ albums and 10x the tracks between the two. It’s astounding this offering isn’t so much a standout in quality, but more of the standard as to what to expect with both never surrendering their effectiveness in the larger rap lexicon.
“Fendi Seats” is arguably the brightest shining gem in the collection with another slick production that give Conway and Gunn the runway they need to lay down some of the smoothest bars they have. On the flipside, the “Brains on the Basquiat” does a quintessential job in displaying the marriage of the high and low art forms expanded upon and represented throughout their never ending run, with Conway arguably getting the best bar out of the entire album: ‘the plug’s daughter callin me La Maquina, shot him in the hall, blew his brains on the Basquiat‘, although never eclipsing the surrel chaos that is Westside Gunn as his delivery on the follow up is drenched in venom as he proclaims: ‘fuck you fuck you and fuck you, I put the barrel in yo throat, yo‘.
Griselda’s ascension has been astounding, and breathtaking, in considering that I relinquish my last statement to AA Rashid, as he, in his position as Griselda’s spiritual advisor, said it best, although absent on Griselda Ghost:
‘I’m still wondering how, where in the fuck is this?
Where y’all getting this shit from, man?
What is this, some ol’ kind of hip-hop wizardry?
You a legend
Word is bond, and I just wanna say when people doing good you supposed to tell ’em
For real
Anything else is uncivilized‘
