* En anglais uniquement
Bringing the sounds of '90s hardcore rap into the 21st century, Buffalo-bred rapper
Westside Gunn emerged as an underdog from the underground alongside his brother and fellow emcee,
Conway. With their tales of street life, drugs, and gun violence, the pair have employed sample-heavy production in the gritty East Coast tradition of
the Lox,
Mobb Deep,
Capone-N-Noreaga, and
the Wu-Tang Clan. In addition to his work with
Conway and their Griselda labelmates,
Westside Gunn branched out on his own with a series of
Hitler Wears Hermes mixtapes issued in the 2010s, as well as solo albums such as Flygod (2016),
Supreme Blientele (2018), and Pray for Paris (2020), the latter of which cracked the upper half of the Billboard 200.
Gunn's fourth studio album,
Who Made the Sunshine, arrived in 2020, followed by his 2021 mixtape
Hitler Wears Hermes 8: Sincerely, Adolf.
Born Alvin Lamar Worthy in Buffalo, New York,
Westside Gunn started rapping at a young age. In high school, he joined with
Conway (born Demond Price) and fellow rappers
Benny the Butcher and Machine Gun Black as the Forerunners. They stuck together over the years and in the early 2010s, they founded Griselda Records. In addition to output as
Westside Gunn & Conway, Worthy began issuing his own mixtapes, including the
Hitler Wears Hermes series, which kicked off in 2012. With his strong, steady rhymes and often laid-back production, he released five installments of the Hermes series into 2017.
His debut studio full-length, Flygod, arrived in 2016 and featured appearances by
Benny,
Conway,
Roc Marciano,
Danny Brown,
Action Bronson, and more, as well as production by
Statik Selektah and
the Alchemist. In 2017, Griselda inked a deal with
Eminem's Shady Records, which graduated
Westside Gunn to the majors. That same year, he hopped onto a collaboration with
MF Doom titled WestsideDoom, and a year later he issued his sophomore LP,
Supreme Blientele, which featured many familiar faces from Flygod, as well as new guests
Jadakiss,
Busta Rhymes,
Anderson .Paak, and producers
Pete Rock and
9th Wonder.
After Griselda hit the Top Ten of Billboard's R&B/hip-hop and rap charts with
WWCD, Westside issued the solo album Pray for Paris in April 2020.
DJ Premier,
DJ Muggs,
the Alchemist, and
Tyler, The Creator were among the contributors to the set, which entered the Billboard 200 at number 67 and the R&B/hip-hop chart at 39. A second
Gunn album,
Who Made the Sunshine, was initially set for release that August, but it was delayed following the death of longtime Griselda Records collaborator
DJ Shay from COVID-19. The album eventually appeared in October 2020 and featured appearances by
Benny,
Conway,
Slick Rick,
Black Thought, and others. Two tracks, "Julia Lang" and "TV Boy," arrived in March 2021 as the first songs released off
Gunn's mixtape
Hitler Wears Hermes 8: Sincerely, Adolf. ~ Neil Z. Yeung