Review: Westside Gunn’s ‘Supreme Blientele’ Is True-School Thug-Rap

This Buffalo rapper, his brother Conway and their Griselda Records camp have an innovative aesthetic combining ’90s thug rap and Alchemist-style dusty loops. That, coupled with a canny marketing strategy aimed at vinyl swagbeasts – Westside Gunn’s 2016 breakthrough Flygod now trades for a ridiculous $600 online – has made the Griselda team an unlikely sensation among true-school enthusiasts. (Griselda inked a deal with Eminem’s Shady Records last year.) Gunn’s latest full-length is threaded together with wrestling-related sound snippets – its original title was Chris Benoit, named after the wrestler who killed his family and himself in 2007 – and pocked by grizzled macho-man cameos from Busta Rhymes, Jadakiss, and Roc Marciano. Gunn himself has a sharp, high-pitched voice and breaks verses down into micro-fragments; he’s not as lyrically deft as some of his thug rap peers, but he’s punchy and effective. “This is for the culture, you wouldn’t understand my sculpture,” he brags over the Blaxploitation soul dream “The Steiners.”