AOTY #5: Conway the Machine - From King To A God [2020]

Welcome to my Album of the Year highlights! I’ll give you a little run down with a brief history to start, show you the tracklist (with the tracks in bold being my favorites) with all of the featured guests (if any), give you some descriptors that might make you more inclined to check it out, and I’ll provide links to stream/buy the project down at the bottom. Enjoy!

As I said in my #9 post last week for Westside Gunn’s Pray For Paris, Griselda has been having a hell of a year. A dozen or so projects under their belt, bulking up the roster with more artists, and a consistency in drops that tops their other years among all of their members. Sans Benny, I think all of the members dropped one of their best projects: Boldy’s Price of Tea (among 3 other killers) and Gunn’s Pray for Paris being two distinctions. But the king of these evolutions, the top of the pile for the Griselda brand, was Conway’s From King To A God, the most well-rounded, forward-thinking, and multi-faceted release under the GxFR umbrella thus far. You get the perfect blend of the murderous drug-dealing of Griselda’s come-up, the more emotional and triumphant reflection music, and shades of modern pop-rap that is just dirty enough to place on a Machine project. The bars are hard (even when he’s speaking on some real shit), the flows are cold, the beats are expertly produced and sequenced, and all of the features are awe-inducing in their legend-status or stunning in their performances. This also is the only album on my list that is directly improved by a Deluxe version, adding great features from Conway’s own Drumwork signees. This is Conway the Machine’s best album, and I say that knowing that Reject 2 and G.O.A.T. exist, but the craziest part is? This isn’t even his Shady Records “debut album”; he’s still prepping us for the real thing. If From King To A God isn’t even the main course, I don’t know if we’re ready for what Conway has for us next.

Tracklist

1. From King

2. Fear Of God (Feat. DeJ Loaf)

3. Lemon (Feat. Method Man)

4. Dough & Damani

5. Juvenile Hell (Feat. Flee Lord, Havoc, & Lloyd Banks)

6. Words From Shay (Interlude)

7. Front Lines

8. Anza (Feat. Armani Caesar)

9. Seen Everything But Jesus (Feat. Freddie Gibbs)

10. Words From Shay (Interlude 2)

11. Spurs 3 (Feat. Benny the Butcher & Westside Gunn)

12. Forever Droppin Tears (Feat. Elcamino)

13. Jesus Krysis

14. Nothin Less

15. Raw Oyster

16. Ameenah’s Van

17. Crack In The Nineties (Feat. Jae Skeese & 7xvethegenius)

18. Serena vs Venus

19. Stefon Diggs (Feat. Jae Skeese)

Drumwork has become a huge part of who Conway will be as a hip-hop mogul in the upcoming decade. Signees like Jae Skeese and 7xvethegenius are going to be the next Griselda’s and BSF’s once those movements start to loose their luster, and Conway (and his brother the Flygod) will be the ones putting these people on

Recommended if you like:

amazing punchlines, Big Pun, incredible unique vocal presences, Sean Price, drug-kingpin raps (Mafioso if you will), Biggie Smalls, introspective lyrics, Prodigy, minimalist sample-based production, Raekwon, underground cats on modern beats, Lloyd Banks

Here are my original writings on From King To A God:

Weekly Fix #37 ('20)

↓ Listen to From King To A God ↓

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music