Westside Gunn is a prolific and independent hip-hop all-rounder. He has made his reputation as a solo artist through four solo albums and more than a dozen essential mixtapes, particularly the Hitler Wears Hermes series. His biggest tunes to date are 327 from 2020’s Pray for Paris album (which features Tyler the Creator, Joey Bada$$, and Billie Essco), and ‘The Fly who couldn’t Fly straight’ from Hitler Wears Hermes 8 (which also features Tyler). He is also co-founder of the seminal Griselda Records and released two records as Griselda with his brother Conway the Machine, cousin Benny the Butcher, and the enigmatic Mach-Hommy. He signed a management deal with Roc Nation in 2019.
After releasing his first music as Westside Gunn in 2005, Gunn launched Griselda Records in 2012, inspired by the near-fatal shooting of Conway the Machine and the murder of his rapper cousin Machine Gun Black. He dropped his first solo mixtape, Hitler Wears Hermes, soon after, explaining that the controversial name was simply an alliterative pun of The Devil Wears Prada. In 2017, Eminem signed him and his Griselda family to Shady Records, making Gunn one of the first rappers out of Buffalo, NY, to secure a major deal. That relationship led to the hit second Griselda album, WWCD, in 2019 as well as the influential Flygod is Good… All the Time solo EP and 2020’s Who Made the Sunshine album.
Gunn has since returned to releasing music independently and dropped two fresh mixtapes, Peace “Fly” God and 10 in 2022.