Westside Gunn - Hitler Wears Hermes 7 [2019]

Griselda records is well on the way to making 2019 the best year in their history. It didn’t get started until April, but the output is increasing exponentially as the year goes on; Conway with EIF 3 and Look What I Became, Benny with the incredible Plugs I Met and his EP with DZA Statue of Limitations. The group still has one more mountain to summit before the end of the year, their group effort as a label What Would Chinegun Do releasing on Shady Records. Before they get to that debut, however, the head of Griselda, the FLYGOD himself, Westside Gunn, decides to drop the seventh installment of his legendary Hitler Wears Hermes mixtape series. I have listened to all of them (and his albums), and, my friends, I can safely say this is Gunn’s most consistent record… maybe ever. I like the original FLYGOD album, and Hitler 4 was great, but Supreme Blientele is where I really started to appreciate the man’s genius. It ranked at #4 on my albums of the year in 2018, which made Flygod is an Awesome God and Hitler 6 such disappointments in comparison, with the lack of quality control found there (looking at you HOLOGRAM). Hitler Wears Hermes 7 is the best spread of tracks Westside Gunn had offered possibly ever, with the distinctions between this and Supreme Blientele being the only thing holding me back from declaring it his best.

Flygod is an Awesome God feels more like a mixtape in comparison to Hitler Wears Hermes 7, but I can’t deny that this Action Bronson piece is the superior album art

I will briefly cover Westside Gunn as an emcee, because his status as a rapper is *probably* not why you’re going to listen to this album, but he surely adds to the experience. Gunn’s whole schtick is summed up by something DJ Drama says in the intro to this record: “This is art, meets fashion, meets the streets”. Everything Westside raps about is in this vein, speaking on the art pieces he has acquired, the myriad of shoes/jackets/ski masks he owns in his absurdly large closet, and the number of people he has closed the casket on during drug deals and street wars. He doesn’t move on from these topics, but he doesn’t need to move on from these topics because they, in tandem with the sampled instrumentals, are *key* to the Griselda experience from day one. In terms of how the man sounds, imagine a Jay-Z mixed with Danny Brown (without the zaniness, more of the vocal quality), and throw in a *shitton* of ad libs (BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM). If you aren’t about Westside Gunn as an emcee…. It doesn’t matter because that’s only a fraction of the genius of the Griselda level, and you should still listen to Hitler Wears Hermes 7.

Westside knows his rapping isn’t why people are tuning in, so he brings in the best of the best to accompany him on his tracks. He always has his Grielda cohorts on his records, and Benny and Conway get two features apiece on Hitler Wears Hermes 7. On Undertaker vs. Goldberg, Conway comes up on the back end nailing the griminess of the best perfectly. Lucha Bros has Benny spitting one of the best verses on the project, convincing me more and more that he’s deadass serious when he says “this shit getting easier and easier”. The label comes together on Kool G, going back to the roots of Griselda with Daringer inspired (produced by Alchemist funnily enough) production and bloodthirsty verses from all three of them, Gunn included. But the features continue on outside of the confines of Griselda: DITC checks in on Kelly’s Korner, with Fat Joe laying down a perfectly nostalgic verse. Curren$y reps the Jet Life on Lucha Bros with Benny, spitting a verse that I *think* was a Fetti leftover (the track is also produced by The Alchemist which leads me to believe it came from the Fetti sessons). The longest feature by far is Estee Nack on Banana Yacht, who does all of the verses in supreme fashion. With Gunn only working the hook on here, Estee waxes some crazy poetic with a disjointed flow, but insane internal rhyme schemes.

Westside & Benny recently signed a management deal with Roc Nation, bringing invaluable resources to the Griselda boys

Whenever I separate a paragraph for one track, you know it’s gotta be good, an that’s 100% the case with It’s Possible. It’s up there in my top ten tracks of the year, and for a lot of the same reasons why Palmolive from Freddie Gibbs & Madlib’s Bandana is also on this list. I’m a sucker for those tight, soulful vocal sampled loops throwing on as few drums as possible that not only brings out the best in the instrumental, but also the artists involved, because it is inherently difficult to rap over. Despite this, none of the three artists have any trouble rapping over this one, as all three come together to deliver the quality-est of quality. Jay Worthy from LNDN DRGS is up first, his lyrics heavily inspired by the west-coast, and his vocals sounding like he’s getting over a cold. It’s hilarious, but also fits so well over the instrumental in a cinematic way; almost like a comedy element in a film. Westside Gunn is in rare form on the back end, getting on his storytelling shit, speaking in bullet-points on the events that have led to his position as the top of the game: the fall of BMF, Chinegun getting killed, doing time in the pen, finessing in the street with Sly Green. It’s rare that I’m paying so much attention to what Gunn is saying, but I would like to think he heard this instrumental and said “I can’t let this shit go un-murked”. The longest verse, the middle verse, my favorite verse on this project, and up there with my favorite verses of this year come from Detroit’s own Boldy James, who we were BLESSED to receive two whole verses from this week, one here and one on Apollo Brown’s LP. Boldy’s strength is both in the way he says things and the syntax of his sentences; he’s one of the most compelling rappers I’ve ever listened to. There’s a deep wisdom to his voice, an authenticity to the stories he tells, and a poetic edge to the ways he constructs his sentences; all of this coming together over this heavenly instrumental creates a musical moment that feels truly enlightened. I really hope Boldy is coming with a project of his own soon, because this has ramped up my appetite significantly. My last thought on It’s Possible: shoutout to Sadhugold for blessing us with this instrumental, who has been a leading face in this drumless beat wave.

The only bad album art Gunn has ever put out, but attached to such a quality project it’s easy to overlook. Hitler 4 will be a classic mixtape when all is said and done.

Alright, there *are* other tracks here, and almost all of them could be on a list of sublime Westside Gunn beats. There are three main parts of the production here that is used constantly and effectively across the album: hard-nosed piano notes (not usually piano “playing”), horns horns horns that can be both beautiful and warped, and immaculate vintage vocal samples. Broadway Jones and Size 42 are two piano hitters in a one two punch right at the beginning of the record, with the latter highlighted for it’s loudly played single notes reaching the limits of the key. The Goldberg half of Undertaker vs. Goldberg is a piano ode to Gunns Pyrex, which undoubtedly had gotten him through some tough times. It’s two parts sweet and one part hilarious in the way he delivers it, and it’s the lightest moment on the album… but is quickly followed by one of the hardest moment on the album, the Goldberg side, which features this amazingly distorted horn sample with some dusty ass drums. I absolutely love this sonically warped aesthetic, something I wish the Griselda boys would incorporate more often; this instrumental in particular reminds me of RZA’s Stroke of Death with the way DJ Green Lantern plays with the sample, slowing down and speeding up. But the horn is only just getting started, because the track before Undertaker vs. Goldberg, Kelly’s Korner, is a Statik Selektah classic of jazzy horns that isn’t much of a loop as it is a soundtrack to this life that Gunn and Fat Joe rap about. It’s low-key but high-class, something that Statik is a master at creating with his sample landscapes. Lucha Bros has the best horns on the project, with the chord progression reminding me of a wrestler walking up the ring for his last match. The track also has a killer groove, a swagger that Westside Gunn and especially Curren$y are able to tap into. Love U is a short interlude that’s mostly horn and vocal sample, a rare misstep on the project as I think it should have been combined with Whoopy before it. Vocal samples make their selves known from the outset the shit-talking anthem Fcknxtwk (I’ll be honest, I have no idea what that means), with choral vocal harmonies swelling behind what will eventually be legendary words from DJ Drama. I’ve already spoke on It’s Possible, but the *second best* vocal work comes on Connie’s Son, which may as well be Amherst Station 3 with it’s perfect use of that soul samples that wails away in the background. There are a couple of outliers that are just as quality, like Banana Yacht with it’s razor sharp and symphonic string sections, like a bullet-ridden Nutcracker on Ice performance. Gondek is an analogue beat-machine type beat, with a scary gutter, waterlogged sound to it.

The genius of this album is showing on so many different fronts; the beats, the vibes, the atmospheres, the use of features, and the overarching dedication to the central tenants of being a Griselda member (art, fashion, streets). This is a quintessential Griselda release in every way, and is a must listen for anyway looking to get into the label. That Hitler Wears Hermes 7 is the *seventh* in a mixtape series and seems to bet getting better as time goes on is something that almost no artist has been able to achieve, and is only possible from someone with the laser focus on their craft and roadmap that Westside Gunn has. We’re almost to the top of the Griselda summit; What Would Chinegun Do will be the ending of the long journey to the top. Buuuuuuut, just to make sure y’all never forget who started this shit, began this wave, and claims the King of New York title vehemently, Westside Gunn came through to remind you that the FLYGOD is both the master of beautiful music and expressive violence. Art and the streets. Hermes and Hitler.

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