Conway the Machine & Wun Two
Palermo
VINYL DIGITAL
If you’re of the mind that hip-hop no longer sounds particularly dangerous, then you probably haven’t been paying attention to Conway the Machine. The toast of Buffalo and a co-founder of Griselda Records with his brother Westside Gunn and cousin Benny the Butcher, Conway’s coarse voice, his impromptu, free-jazz verse-making, and his deliberate, baleful delivery is menace personified. That was true of his 2020 debut album From King to a GOD, his Shady Records effort God Don’t Make Mistakes, and 2023’s Won’t He Do It: all mean, all the time.
Now, together with German trap producer Wun Two, Conway is riding out 2023 with Palermo, a darkly clouded, overstuffed release that eats like a huge holiday meal after a maudlin family funeral. While I can’t say that Palermo’s lyrics are remarkable—or even that inspired beyond the norm of being strapped and bejeweled—the slithering tone in how Conway and featured guests Goosebytheway and KNDRX wreak havoc on tracks such as their co-joined “Cold Dish” and “Montagna” is monumentally diabolical. If you could compress all of the cinematic sonic tension and Conway’s mournful wordplay from “Brick by Brick” and “Carduni” into one moment, it would be akin to screening every Saw film on fast-forward while drunk. And I mean that as nothing but the highest-ever horror-scape compliment.
