Conway The Machine’s five best songs
Conway the Machine, while hardly sounding old-fashioned, nonetheless evokes some of the gritty feel of ’90s East Coast hip-hop at its best. His music is often dark, clever, and smooth, and while he’s not one of the biggest rappers around today, he’s arguably among the most talented.
Conway helped to set up Griselda Records in the early 2010s, a label that ultimately revolved around Conway himself, his half-brother Westside Gunn, and his cousin Benny the Butcher. Griselda was primarily focused on putting out music by these three, and, in 2017, the label signed a deal with Eminem’s Shady Records, which was a big step forward. Conway and his Griselda associates were carving out their place within the hip-hop scene.
But it so easily could have gone another way for Conway, following a brutal attack he sustained in 2012. He was shot from behind in the neck and shoulder, which left half of his face paralysed. The fact he’d survived was lucky in and of itself, but his injuries threatened his ability to ever rap again. But, as he once remarked for a feature on Bandcamp, “I had to slow it down and get dirty beats, get it spooky to go with how my voice sounds.” He changed his style to suit his disability, and, in the end, it paid off. His vocal style is very much his own.
By 2022, it had come time for Conway to move on from Shady and Griselda Records. He set up his own label, Drumwork, on which he has released more and more music. He now has quite the back catalogue of songs, be they lifted from albums or mixtapes, and, of all the tracks, these are among his best.
Conway The Machine’s five best songs
5. ‘Scatter Brain’
In 2021, Conway released the La Maquina mixtape, the phrase “la maquina” being Spanish for “the machine,” which is a nickname he’s carried with him for a long time. The mixtape, the eighth of Conway’s career, features a fair number of guest rappers and producers, the most prestigious of whom is probably The Alchemist. The only people who can give Al a run for his money in that regard are Ludacris and JID, who both feature on the track ‘Scatter Gun.’
The song sees Conway, Ludacris and JID dealing with the knotty subject of gun violence in quite a stark, visceral way, all while squeezing in references to Rick James, Coca-Cola and social distancing from the COVID days. It’s quite an intense song in parts, but, despite the violence it depicts, the trio were nonetheless invited to perform it on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2021.
4. ‘The Chosen’
‘The Chosen’ was selected as one of the singles from Won’t He Do It, Conway’s third album that was released in 2023. It featured Jae Skeese, who Conway had signed to his own Drumwork imprint and who has also appeared on several of his other tracks. The beat for ‘The Chosen’ was created by the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League production team, who went with a boisterous, brass-powered feel that imbues the song with a fair amount of frantic energy. It hits fairly hard.
As Conway reflected to Rolling Stone around the time of the mixtape’s release, the song has a certain sports montage feel to it—which is what helped sway him to use it as a single. As he put it, “Really just watching the playoffs right now, like, ‘This will fit good on some NBA TV shit.’” He was also keen to get Skeese to feature on it, because he was releasing an album of his own, Abolished Uncertainties, around the same time, and the feature on Conway’s track was designed to give him a little boost.
3. ‘Fendi Seats’
Conway, alongside his half-brother Westside Gunn, is one half of the duo Hall & Nash—“Hall,” within the context of the partnership, refers to Gunn, and “Nash” to Conway. They started releasing music under the Hall & Nash name in 2015, while they were both building their solo careers through their shared Griselda label, and arguably the best song they ever made together as Hall & Nash is ‘Fendi Seats.’
The song has an old-school feel, and it attempts the audacious by sampling the legendary Italian film composer Ennio Morricone. Morricone, despite having created so much music that toys with a variety of genres, nonetheless has a very distinct sound, and the sample of his song ‘Doricamente’ imbues ‘Fendi Seats’ with a strange, airy sense of space that helps it to stand out on the 50-track 50 Round Drum mixtape that it features on.
2. ‘Forever Droppin’ Tears’
‘Forever Droppin’ Tears,’ as the very title implies, is an emotional track that sees Conway reflecting on the loss of two of his friends. Featured on his debut album, 2020’s From King to a God, the track is a deeply personal reflection from Conway about his lost pals and how their deaths have affected his life. Given the difficult subject matter, the music needed to be just right, and, to help with that, he turned to two legends to produce. The beat was made by Erick Sermon and Rockwilder.
Getting these two on board meant a lot to Conway, as he told Uproxx. “I’m super thankful that I’m even being checked for by dudes of this caliber,” he said. “[Erick Sermon] reached out to me and we exchanged numbers and we kind of been touch, back and forth, for a minute. And I just went for it, like, ‘Yo man, send me a batch, I need to get a joint, I need you on this album, man.’ He sent a batch and this was one of the first beats that I heard. I clicked on it and that was enough for me. That was all I needed.”
1. ‘Stressed’
‘Stressed’ is another personal track from Conway, and it is perhaps the most harrowing. In it he deals with themes of depression, addiction, and grief, specifically that which he experienced following the loss of his infant child. It was a tough process to put the song together, for obvious reasons, but, as he revealed to The Breakfast Club, he felt driven to do it for the sake of his listeners who might be going through something similar. “I think people needed to see somebody that’s as cool and fly as I am… unpack everything on a record and talk about shit like that,” as he put it.
Conway went on to talk about his experience with therapy and the benefits he received from it. He noted that, while lots of rappers tend to perform as a character, he is willing to reveal his genuine self within his music, and he hoped that this would be helpful for his listeners. “Black men, we go through a lot of shit,” he said. “In the hood, especially. We’re taught not to feel. But it’s like, if you have a toothache, you gon’ go to the dentist. So, if you got something going on, go talk to somebody and take care of that.”