Album Highlight: LULU
By The Alchemist & Conway The Machine (2020)
This 2020 project is part of an insane run of releases from the Alchemist in 2020 between “Alfredo” and “The Price of Tea in China” from Freddie Gibbs and Boldy James respectively. Even though those albums both get high praise (deservedly) this one might have flown under the radar a little bit if you weren’t tapped in during the original release. With both cinematic, grimy and gritty production from The Alchemist, Conway also delivers hard-hitting raps throughout the entire project. This EP is quite short only lasting 22 minutes total, but the production from Al leaves nothing to be desired. While Conway sounds more polished on this EP than projects that came before.
The EP starts of with an intro, of Conway explaining his approach to music while multiple mobster movie quotes play in between. Jumping right into the first highlighted track “14 Ki’s”. With Conway spitting his signature Griselda style bars with references to his criminal past, rap culture, high end fashion and sports references. Not only are his bars hard, but Conway also delivers a really nice rhyme scheme throughout the entire song. The beat on this track is as to be expected from Al, beautiful as always, while still supplying the gritty undertone, which supports Conway’s performance.
“Shoot Sideways” the third song on the album features ScHoolboy Q, whi only provides the hook on this song, which fits the sound and overall vibe of the track perfectly. The beat sounds exactly how you expect the original album cover to look in my opinion, the grimy sound of a violin or double bass makes it sound like you’re getting hunted by a bloodthirsty shark. Conway also does another great job on this track, boasting and bragging, about shootings and his come up in the rap game.
Track 5, excluding the intro, called “They Got Sonny” features NY underground rapper and Nas affiliate Cormega. Cormega has somewhat made a public reappearance during the early 2020s, reuniting with Nas and his former group to release music, altho he has stayed relatively active over the years, collaborating with Roc Marciano and various other artists in the underground scene years prior. Alchemist provides another gritty beat consisting of rattling chimes and trumpet-like sounds throughout the beat. Conway comes through with a verse, boasting about his rap skills as per usual, but also detailing the rough life in Buffalo where he’s from. A city with rampant drug use, poverty and crime in his area using it as motivation to make it through rap.
The last highlight and last track on the project is called “Gold BBS”. Alchemist once again provides another dark and grimey beat with a sound best described as manipulated vocals combined with chimes which create a high-pitched eery synth-like sound slicing right through the instrumental. On this track it sounds like Conway is having some fun with funny bars sprinkled throughout arguably his most dark and grimey verse and hook on the project.
Overall, this short EP from Conway and Alchemist leaves little to be desired, it doesn’t run on too long and keeps it sound condensed within 22 minutes. With some of Alchemist’s most grimey production on an entire project and Conway delivering equally dark and great raps on most of the tracks on this project, all I can do is recommend checking it out. This seems like the best project to get into Conway, and the Griselda collective if you’ve never heard of any of them.
0 comments