Scorecard: 7.9/10 · Great
How we score- Writing(25%)
- 8.0
Vivid drug-dealing images with specific brand names and art-world references make the cocaine rap concrete rather than generic, though some verses rely on shock value over substance.
- Production(25%)
- 9.0
Daringer's sample flips on Dunks, Free Chapo and Omar's Coming create grainy drama that sounds like no other East Coast production in 2016, while Apollo Brown and The Alchemist add texture.
- Delivery(15%)
- 7.0
The high-pitched ad-libs and nasal tone are polarizing but committed, and Conway's grounded verses on Dunks and Free Chapo show the contrast works when it's balanced.
- Cohesion(15%)
- 6.5
Eighteen tracks with several skits and a four-minute outro make this feel sprawling, and the Sly Green Skit breaks momentum when the album could have ended five tracks earlier.
- Originality(10%)
- 8.5
Nothing in 2016 underground rap sounded like this collision of dusty samples, high-fashion obsession and Buffalo street reporting, which became the template for Griselda's entire run.
- Replay value(10%)
- 7.5
The best Daringer beats hold up years later, but the album's length and the weaker back half make full playthroughs rare after the initial immersion.
Westside Gunn FLYGOD — When Buffalo Brought Back the Grime
In 2016, when most underground rap was chasing boom-bap reverence or cloud-rap drift, FLYGOD arrived sounding like a cocaine deal conducted in an art gallery over gunshots played through blown speakers. Westside Gunn's debut opens with Dunks, a Daringer beat built from a warped soul sample that sounds corroded, and over it Gunn raps about Dior tracksuits and bricks in a high-pitched nasal whine punctuated by his signature ad-libs. The thesis is immediate: this is East Coast street rap that refuses to sound clean or nostalgic, that treats luxury brands and drug weight with the same obsessive specificity, and that sounds nothing like the New York revivalism or West Coast smoothness dominating the underground at the time.
The stakes were higher than they seemed. Buffalo had no recent claim on rap's center, Griselda Records was unknown, and this sound—grainy, abrasive, unapologetically niche—had no obvious lane in 2016. But FLYGOD became the foundational document for a movement, the record that proved you could build a fanbase by ignoring every streaming-era concession and doubling down on what the coasts had left behind: sample-heavy beats with no crossover ambition, writing that assumed you knew your Scarface references, and a refusal to sand down any edges. The album works because Gunn and his producers, chiefly Daringer, committed fully to a vision that sounded warped and ugly on purpose, and because the writing is specific enough—brand names, art references, Buffalo locations—to feel like reporting rather than posturing. It does not work all the way through: eighteen tracks is too many, the back half sags, and Gunn's voice and ad-libs will alienate as many listeners as they convert.
Grime as Aesthetic: Daringer's Corroded Soul and Gunn's Luxury Trap Reports
The production here, dominated by Daringer across ten of eighteen tracks, is the sound of soul samples left in a basement for thirty years and then played through a sampler with broken circuitry. On Dunks, the vocal loop is pitched and chopped until it sounds haunted, with drums that hit hard but never clean. Shower Shoe Lords flips a similar formula: a melancholy loop, drums mixed low and grimy, and space left for Gunn and Benny to thread their verses through the murk. Free Chapo strips it down further, just a piano loop and minimal drums, giving Conway room to anchor the track with a verse about prison calls and paranoia. This is East Coast production that refuses the crispness of boom-bap revivalism or the warmth of soul rap; it sounds deliberately degraded, and that grime becomes the album's signature.
The guest producers add necessary variety without breaking the mood. Apollo Brown on Mr. T brings his Detroit orchestral soul, Roc Marciano produces and raps on Hall and Omar's Coming with his usual minimalist menace, and The Alchemist closes Dudley Boyz with a stripped loop that lets Action Bronson deliver one of the album's loosest, most conversational verses. Statik Selektah's contribution on 50 Inch Zenith is the cleanest beat here, almost too polished against the rest, but Skyzoo's technical verse justifies the detour. The weaker moments come when the production tries to push beyond the core sound: King City, handled by Tha God Fahim, feels cluttered and low-budget compared to Daringer's work, and the Outro drags at over four minutes with a Camouflage Monk beat that never resolves into a hook or a structure.
Gunn's writing is where the album earns its cult status. He raps about cocaine and violence with the same art-world vocabulary he uses for fashion: Vivian at the Art Basel name-checks galleries and artists, Over Gold compares cooking crack to luxury dining, and Bodies on Fairfax treats a Los Angeles murder scene like a runway. This is not just code-switching; it is a deliberate collision of high and low culture that makes the drug dealing feel curated rather than desperate. The specificity sells it: brand names like Raf Simons and Goyard, Buffalo locations like Albright Knox, references to wrestlers and hood legends. When it works, as on Gustavo or Omar's Coming, the writing feels like insider knowledge. When it does not, as on Chine Gun or parts of 55 & A Half, it sounds like a list of expensive things with no argument holding them together.
The vocal performance is the album's most divisive element. Gunn's high-pitched delivery and nasal tone, combined with ad-libs that punctuate nearly every bar, create a texture that either pulls you in or pushes you out within two tracks. His flow is not technically skilled—he rarely switches cadences, and his voice cracks when he tries to add emphasis—but the commitment to the aesthetic is total. Conway, who appears on three tracks, provides the necessary grounding: his voice is deeper, his flow more controlled, and his verses on Dunks and Free Chapo are the album's most reliable anchors. Benny on Shower Shoe Lords and Danny Brown on Bodies on Fairfax both outrap Gunn on their respective tracks, which exposes the host's limitations but also proves the album benefits from the contrast.
Pacing the Sprawl: When Eighteen Tracks Earn Their Length and When They Don't
FLYGOD front-loads its best material: the first seven tracks establish the sound and deliver the most cohesive stretch of the album. The opening run includes a ninety-second interlude that works because the beat is eerie enough to justify the pause, and two tracks under three minutes each that hit and exit before they wear out. The middle section mixes strong entries with weaker ones but maintains momentum because the beats stay varied and the guests keep the energy shifting.
The back half is where the album loses its grip. After the midpoint, the sequencing becomes scattershot: one track is solid but feels like a different album, a skit is pointless, and another revisits the core sound without adding anything new. A Buffalo-specific entry tries to close the argument, but then two more tracks add another seven minutes that feel like bonus material rather than earned conclusions. The penultimate beat is strong and the guest verse is fun, but the track belongs on a compilation, not at the end of a statement album. The closer, over four minutes of spoken word and a wandering beat, is the kind of indulgence that works for die-hards and tests everyone else.
The album would be tighter at thirteen or fourteen tracks, ending around the two-thirds mark. As it stands, FLYGOD demands patience in its second half, rewarding it only occasionally. The length is both a flaw and part of the underground ethos: this is a record made for people who will sit with it, not for playlists or casual spins.
The Blueprint That Launched Griselda and Defined a Decade of Underground Rap
FLYGOD is the most important underground rap album of the second half of the 2010s, the record that gave Griselda its identity and proved that a regional sound with no radio ambitions could build a movement. It ranks as Westside Gunn's most influential project because it establishes everything that followed: the Daringer production aesthetic, the art-and-cocaine writing formula, the high-pitched ad-libs, the Griselda roster as a collective force. Whether it is his best album is a different question—later projects like Supreme Blientele tighten the sequencing, and Pray for Paris adds more ambitious production—but FLYGOD is the one that matters most because it arrived when nothing else sounded like it.
This album is for listeners who want East Coast rap that sounds grimy and specific, who value aesthetic commitment over technical rapping, and who are willing to sit through eighteen tracks to get the full vision. Skip it if you need clean production, varied flows, or albums that edit themselves down to essentials. The voice and the ad-libs are non-negotiable: if they grate on you by the end of Dunks, the rest of the album will not convert you. If they pull you in, this is a world you can live inside.
Start with Dunks, Shower Shoe Lords and Omar's Coming to hear the core sound at its best, then move to Bodies on Fairfax for the wildcard energy Danny Brown brings. If those tracks work, the full album is worth the time despite the sag in the back half. From here, the logical next steps are Conway the Machine's Reject 2 to hear the grounded, technical counterpoint to Gunn's aesthetic rap, or Roc Marciano's Rosebudd's Revenge to trace the lineage of this skeletal, sample-based production back to its source. FLYGOD is not an easy album or a universal one, but it is the sound of a city and a crew announcing themselves with total conviction, and that conviction is why it still plays like a challenge six years later.
Track Listing
Dunks
▲The opening track sets every template: Daringer's corroded soul loop, Gunn's high-pitched ad-libs over Dior and drug talk, and Conway arriving to anchor the chaos with a technically superior verse about paranoia and money. The beat sounds like it was recorded onto a cassette and then left in a car for a summer, deliberately grainy, and the contrast between Gunn's nasal whine and Conway's authoritative baritone establishes the Griselda dynamic that will carry the whole roster. The sequencing choice to open here is perfect: if you are not in by the end of this track, the album is not for you. Gunn's writing about fashion and cocaine is already fully formed, specific without being preachy, and the track never overstays at just over four minutes.
Gustavo
▲Keisha Plum's sung hook adds a melodic layer the album rarely revisits, and Daringer's beat here is slightly warmer than Dunks, with a soul sample that has not been mangled quite as hard. Gunn's verse is one of his most sustained on the album, staying on the theme of a plug relationship without drifting into ad-lib overload. The writing is vivid—specific amounts of drugs, specific betrayals—and the track works as a narrative even though it never tells a linear story. This is the album's best showcase for Gunn as a solo performer, without a guest to carry or outshine him.
Shower Shoe Lords
▲Benny the Butcher outraps Gunn on his own album, delivering the kind of technically clean, thematically focused verse that makes you wonder why he is not the frontman. Daringer's beat is minimal and menacing, just a chopped loop and hard drums, giving both rappers room to work without clutter. Gunn holds his own here more than on most tracks, his flow tighter and his ad-libs less frequent, but Benny's presence exposes the gap in pure rapping ability. The title and the imagery—shower shoes as a stand-in for commissary survival and jail culture—give the track a conceptual anchor that some of the later songs lack.
Vivian at the Art Basel
●The art-world title and the Camouflage Monk beat that sounds like a jazz loop slowed to a crawl make this one of the album's most overtly highbrow moments, and Your Old Droog's technically proficient verse matches the ambition. Gunn's writing here leans fully into the gallery references and luxury brand names, treating the drug trade like a curatorial project, and it is either brilliant or obnoxious depending on your tolerance for the conceit. The beat is too slow and too sparse for some listeners, but it gives the track a meditative quality that contrasts with the aggression elsewhere. This is the clearest statement of the album's aesthetic collision: high culture and street violence treated as the same language.
Hall
▲A ninety-second Roc Marciano interlude that works because the beat is eerie and minimal, just a distorted loop and no drums, and Gunn's verse is short enough to function as a palate cleanser rather than filler. The lack of drums is a risk that pays off, giving the album a moment of negative space before it ramps back up. This is how interludes should work: atmosphere without wasting time.
Free Chapo
▲The title references Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, and the track is a two-and-a-half-minute mission statement about loyalty and paranoia. Daringer's beat is just a piano loop and minimal drums, one of the most stripped-down productions on the album, and Conway's verse about prison calls and betrayal is the emotional center. Gunn's hook, chanting the title over and over with ad-libs, is hypnotic rather than annoying, and the track's brevity is a strength: it makes its point and exits. This is one of the most replayable songs here because it does not overstay or overexplain.
Over Gold
▲Meyhem Lauren's Queens accent and food-obsessed writing add a jolt of personality, and Daringer's beat is one of the album's grimiest, with a soul loop that sounds waterlogged. The culinary metaphors for cooking crack are not original, but the specificity of the imagery—restaurant names, chef references—keeps it from feeling generic. Gunn's verse is solid but not essential, and the track works mostly because Lauren brings energy that contrasts with Gunn's monotone. Short and punchy at under three minutes.
Bodies on Fairfax
▲Danny Brown is the wildcard, and his manic energy over Daringer's bleak beat creates the album's most unstable moment. Brown raps about violence and paranoia with a cracked delivery that makes Gunn sound reserved, and the contrast is thrilling even when the verse itself is more vibes than structure. The beat is excellent, one of Daringer's best, with a chopped vocal sample that sounds haunted. Gunn's verse is weaker here than on most tracks, but the song works because Brown's presence makes it feel like a collaboration between two different undergrounds rather than a standard feature.
Chine Gun
▼A solo Gunn track that feels like filler: the beat is fine but unremarkable, and the writing is a list of brands and guns without a theme or a narrative to hold them together. The ad-libs overwhelm the actual rapping here, and at two and a half minutes it still feels longer than it should. This is the kind of track that works as deep album cut for completists but does not justify revisiting on its own.
King City
▼Tha God Fahim's production is cluttered and low-budget compared to Daringer's work, with too many elements competing for space, and DJ Q-Bert's scratching feels like a stunt rather than a musical choice. Mach-Hommy's verse is technically impressive but does not mesh with the beat, and Gunn's contribution is one of his least focused. The track has cult appeal because of the roster—Mach-Hommy's early obscurity makes this a collector's item now—but it is one of the album's weakest musically.
Omar’s Coming
▲The title references The Wire, and the track delivers: Roc Marciano's minimal beat, his cold verse about chess moves and violence, Conway's grounded writing about Buffalo, and Gunn holding his own without overshadowing either guest. This is the album's best posse cut, three voices that complement rather than compete, and the sequencing works because the beat is stripped down enough to function as a breather after the chaos of the first half. Marciano's deadpan delivery is the perfect foil for Gunn's ad-libs, and Conway's verse is the anchor. Essential.
Mr. T
▲Apollo Brown's orchestral soul production is the warmest beat on the album, almost too clean against the Daringer grime, but the lushness works as a contrast after ten tracks of corroded loops. Gunn's solo verse here is one of his most relaxed, his flow settling into the pocket rather than fighting the beat, and the writing is strong: specific memories of Buffalo, specific debts and betrayals. This could have been the album's closing track, a moment of reflection before the outro, and the sequencing would have been tighter for it.
50 in. Zenith
●Statik Selektah's boom-bap production is the album's most traditionally East Coast beat, and Skyzoo's technically proficient verse is a showcase of pure rapping skill that exposes Gunn's limitations. The track is solid but feels like it belongs on a different album, too polished and too conventional against the grime that defines FLYGOD. Gunn's verse is competent but forgettable, and the track works mostly as a reminder that Griselda's aesthetic is a choice rather than a technical limitation.
Sly Green Skit
▼A minute-long skit that adds nothing and breaks momentum when the album is already sagging. Skippable.
55 & a Half
▼Daringer returns to the core sound, but the beat here is a retread of earlier tracks without adding new textures, and Gunn's verse is one of his weakest: ad-libs overwhelm the bars, and the writing is generic cocaine rap without the art-world specificity that makes the best tracks work. At three and a half minutes it is not offensively long, but it feels redundant after thirteen tracks.
Albright Knox
●The title references Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and the track is a late-album attempt to return to the regional specificity and art-world framing that define the project. The beat is solid, and Gunn's verse is more focused than on the previous two tracks, but the inclusion of a relatively unknown feature (Chase) does not add much. This could have worked as the album's closing argument, but the decision to add two more tracks after it undermines the finality.
Dudley Boyz
●The Alchemist delivers a skeletal loop that gives Action Bronson room to deliver a conversational, almost jokey verse about food and violence, and the track works as a fun closer to the main album. Bronson's loose energy is a relief after the intensity of the previous tracks, and the Alchemist's minimalism fits the Griselda aesthetic without mimicking Daringer. But the sequencing is wrong: this should be a bonus track, not the penultimate song on a debut album trying to establish a sound.
Outro
▼Over four minutes of spoken word, ambient noise, and a Camouflage Monk beat that never coheres into a structure, this is the kind of indulgent outro that loses casual listeners and rewards only the most committed fans. AA Rashid's monologue is presumably meaningful to the Griselda circle but offers no narrative or thematic closure for the album itself. The beat is interesting in pieces but exhausting at this length, and the decision to end the album here rather than with a strong final track is a mistake. This is filler dressed up as atmosphere.
