Still Praying

An underdog from the underground, Buffalo-bred rapper Westside Gunn brings the sounds of '90s hardcore rap into the 21st century alongside his brother and fellow emcee Conway. With their tales of street life, drugs, and gun violence, the pair have employed sample-heavy production in the gritty East Coast tradition of the Lox, Mobb Deep, Capone-N-Noreaga, and the Wu-Tang Clan. In addition to his work with Conway and their Griselda labelmates, Westside Gunn branched out on his own with a series of Hitler Wears Hermes mixtapes issued in the 2010s, as well as solo albums such as Flygod (2016), Supreme Blientele (2018), and Pray for Paris (2020), the latter of which cracked the upper half of the Billboard 200. The lengthy, guest-heavy full-length And Then You Pray for Me appeared in 2023 and reached the Top 30 of the same chart. The EP 11 and a mixtape, Still Praying, were released almost simultaneously in 2024.

Born Alvin Lamar Worthy in Buffalo, New York, Westside Gunn started rapping at a young age. In high school, he joined with Conway (born Demond Price) and fellow rappers Benny the Butcher and Machine Gun Black as the Forerunners. They stuck together over the years and in the early 2010s, they founded Griselda Records. In addition to output as Westside Gunn & Conway, Worthy began issuing his own mixtapes, including the Hitler Wears Hermes series, which kicked off in 2012. With his strong, steady rhymes and often laid-back production, he released five installments of the Hermes series into 2017.

His debut studio full-length, Flygod, arrived in 2016 and featured appearances by Benny, Conway, Roc Marciano, Danny Brown, Action Bronson, and more, as well as production by Statik Selektah and the Alchemist. In 2017, Griselda inked a deal with Eminem's Shady Records, which graduated Westside Gunn to the majors. That same year, he hopped onto a collaboration with MF Doom titled WestsideDoom, and a year later he issued his sophomore LP, Supreme Blientele, which featured many familiar faces from Flygod, as well as new guests Jadakiss, Busta Rhymes, Anderson .Paak, and producers Pete Rock and 9th Wonder.

After Griselda hit the Top Ten of Billboard's R&B/hip-hop and rap charts with WWCD, Westside issued the solo album Pray for Paris in April 2020. DJ Premier, DJ Muggs, the Alchemist, and Tyler, The Creator were among the contributors to the set, which entered the Billboard 200 at number 67 and the R&B/hip-hop chart at 39. A second Gunn album, Who Made the Sunshine, was initially set for release that August, but it was delayed following the death of longtime Griselda Records collaborator DJ Shay from COVID-19. The album eventually appeared in October 2020 and featured appearances by Benny, Conway, Slick Rick, Black Thought, and others. Two tracks, "Julia Lang" and "TV Boy," arrived in March 2021 as the first songs released off Gunn's mixtape Hitler Wears Hermes 8: Sincerely, Adolf. Hitler Wears Hermes 8: Side B followed. The mixtapes Peace "Fly" God and 10 (the final installment in the Hitler Wears Hermes series) appeared in 2022. The studio album And Then You Pray for Me arrived in 2023, boasting guests like Rick Ross, DJ Drama, Denzel Curry, and Boldy James. It reached number 29 on the Billboard 200. In 2024, Gunn issued the EP 11 as well as the DJ Drama-hosted mixtape Still Praying. ~ Neil Z. Yeung

DJ, producer, label boss, and more, Drama is one of the most important, famous, and even infamous players in the mixtape game. While riding out the 2000s and 2010s as the host of his high-profile Gangsta Grillz mixtape series, Drama co-founded the Atlantic Records sublabel Generation Now, finding chart-topping success with a new wave of rappers who included Lil Uzi Vert and Jack Harlow. Drama's streetwise working method is prolifically producing for other artists as well as releasing mixtapes of his own. Tyler, The Creator's 2021 album Call Me If You Get Lost was inspired by Drama's Gangsta Grillz series and narrated throughout by Drama himself. In 2022 alone, Drama was behind no fewer than ten projects highlighted by the Top Ten Jeezy collaboration SNOFALL. The momentum continued in 2023 with additional charting releases such as I'm Really Like That and I Showed U So, the latter a team-up with Yo Gotti.

Drama began his career in hip-hop in his native Philadelphia under the name DJ Drama. It was in Philly that he befriended Bahamadia, although he wouldn't become her DJ until he made the move to Atlanta in the late '90s to attend Clark Atlanta University. While at CAU, he also began his popular Automatic Relaxation mixtape series, which focused on neo-soul and soulful rap, plus he formed his crew the Aphilliates featuring DJ Don Cannon, DJ Jamad, Ox Banger, and DJ Sense. After a short gig as DJ for Slum Village, he began a new mixtape series, Gangsta Grillz, which would become the prime showcase for hardcore artists looking to connect or reconnect with the streets. Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy, and Jim Jones were just a few of the artists to host a volume of Gangsta Grillz, but it was during the making of Vol. 7 that he met his future employer, T.I. As the official DJ of T.I.'s Grand Hustle organization, Drama became better known, and a cameo in the 2006 film ATL didn't hurt either.

What did hurt was a January 2007 police raid on the Aphilliates office, which found both Drama and Don Cannon under arrest for racketeering, along with 81,000 mixtape CDs being confiscated. Three months later, legal threats from another DJ Drama forced him to change his name to simply Drama. Despite these legal hassles, Drama took his Gangsta Grillz series aboveground late in the year as the legit release Gangsta Grillz: The Album arrived in December courtesy of Grand Hustle/Atlantic. Lil Wayne, OutKast, Pharrell, T.I., and Young Jeezy were just a few of the artists who contributed to the star-studded album. A second volume followed in 2009. In 2011, Third Power became the first Drama album without the Gangsta Grillz tagging, but the guest list would remain big and powerful with names like Wiz Khalifa, Freddie Gibbs, Wale, and Chris Brown all included. Childish Gambino, Kendrick Lamar, 2 Chainz, and Tyler, The Creator were some of the names that landed on the 2012 follow-up Quality Street Music. In 2013 he let his sense of humor show by hosting the Urbane Outfitters, Vol. 1 mixtape from the online hip-hop comedy team ItsTheReal. After taking on an A&R job at Atlantic Records in 2014, Drama and Cannon co-founded Generation Now in 2015, a new label affiliated with Atlantic whose aim was to sign innovative new rap talent. That same year Drama executive-produced Luv Is Rage, the first commercially released mixtape from early Generation Now signee Lil Uzi Vert, who proved to be a huge success for the new label, hitting the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart with 2017 studio debut Luv Is Rage 2.

As Generation Now continued finding new artists to work with, Drama found time to host mixtapes, as always, and to release new music of his own like 2016's Quality Street Music 2 and 2020's 12 AM in Atlanta 2 with Atlanta rapper 24hrs. Drama played a significant role on Tyler, The Creator's 2021 album Call Me If You Get Lost, the mixtape king himself narrating the record in the style of his Gangsta Grillz by-then nostalgic tapes. Especially busy in 2022, Drama was behind mixtapes like the Dreamville/J.Cole collaboration D-Day, teamed with OMB Peezy for Misguided, linked up with Symba for Results Take Time, joined forces with Jeezy for SNOFALL, and more, all within the span of a few months. Most successful was the Jeezy collaboration, which entered the Billboard 200 at number nine -- a career high for Drama. He showed no signs of slowing down in 2023, collaborating on mixtapes with Kash Doll and French Montana before releasing his seventh studio effort, I'm Really Like That, in March of that year. The album was as special-guest-heavy as most of Drama's work, with contributions from Lil Baby, Jack Harlow, Roddy Ricch, Tyler, The Creator, T.I., Lil Wayne, and so many others. I'm Really Like That debuted at number 67 on the Billboard 200. Two months later, Drama and YOVNGCHIMI co-presented a Gangsta Grillz tape showcasing Mvrda Gvng. That August, Drama and Yo Gotti were behind I Showed U So, on which Gotti exchanged verses only with Rich Homie Quan and Moneybagg Yo. ~ David Jeffries