'i admit..i didnt read the griselda contract.. Unfortunately it wasnt in my favor'-conway

[Piff Perkins]

I wonder how the vinyl situation works. Those early projects like Rejects 2 were on bandcamp, had limited release vinyls etc. Was Conway seeing any money from that? Griselda has sold decent vinyl and merch…or did in the past.

More recently, Conway hasn’t sold nearly enough to see much from sales. New album just bombed and the album from last year bombed too. I like both albums a lot btw, I’m just saying he’s not selling. Flip side Benny just did 20k first week, including 7k physicals.

 

[Starburst]

The thing is that these dudes are at least professional enough to not beef in public. I've thought for a while now that everything between the main 3 members wasn't 100% as good as it used to be. But the 3 of them are blood relatives, in their 30's, and are smart enough to not do dumb shyt like air out their personal differences in public.

For as much as people have (rightfully) clowned some of their social media behavior, I honestly believe there's probably stuff between them that they've been very smart about in terms of not speaking about it in the public eye.

God Don't Make Mistakes and Tana Talk 4 definitely feel like the ending of "Chapter 2 of Griselda."

I think all that’s going out the window now that Conway basically said Westside Gunn owes him money. Conway put the narrative out there, and now folk are looking at Gunn in a funny light.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

I wonder how the vinyl situation works. Those early projects like Rejects 2 were on bandcamp, had limited release vinyls etc. Was Conway seeing any money from that? Griselda has sold decent vinyl and merch…or did in the past.

More recently, Conway hasn’t sold nearly enough to see much from sales. New album just bombed and the album from last year bombed too. I like both albums a lot btw, I’m just saying he’s not selling. Flip side Benny just did 20k first week, including 7k physicals.

Conway also took control of his own merch situation in 2019 and started getting his stuff pressed through DeRapWinkel. He stopped using Daupe. Also, I know the all Conway's projects from 2019 to now say "Executive Produced by Westside Gunn" but it's in name only. With the exception of Lulu with Alchemist, Conway has executive produced all of his own projects in the past few years. West has had very little (or maybe even no) input on Conway's more recent work.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

nikkas in here want them to beef so bad, he even said he said that contract was from years ago before they got popping. Him and his brother ain't beefing. And the same nikkas in here that swear they dont like these nikkas is here for controversy

I don't think they're beefing, and you know I'm as big a Griselda fan as anyone on The Coli. And I don't want them to beef at all.

That being said...I don't think their relationships are without friction. And that's not even a big deal. It's impossible to go through life with family and friends without having conflict, and especially not when money is involved. So I'm not even saying it's all that serious.

So I wouldn't call it beef, but I don't think the energy between them is the same as it was a few years ago.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

What did Benny say?

They say West is the brains and Benny is the star
Conway the silliest with the bars, well, I couldn’t agree more
'Cause I'm on prime time TV fresh off tour in Dior
And what that Shady deal was for, my shyt was ten times more
And that's no disrespect at all, the shyt Conway taught me made me a boss
And these West's own words, this how he planned it, this what he saw
That's how he knew not to do that 360 deal with Paul
They both rich, and I am too, so shyt, that advice wasn't wrong

 

[Morose Polymath]

They say West is the brains and Benny is the star
Conway the silliest with the bars, well, I couldn’t agree more
'Cause I'm on prime time TV fresh off tour in Dior
And what that Shady deal was for, my shyt was ten times more
And that's no disrespect at all, the shyt Conway taught me made me a boss
And these West's own words, this how he planned it, this what he saw
That's how he knew not to do that 360 deal with Paul
They both rich, and I am too, so shyt, that advice wasn't wrong

Mr. Chow Hall is eerie as hell.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

Just from reading between the lines it doesn’t seem like Conway understood that he was an ARTIST on Griselda and not a partner. He mentions several times how he built Griselda was there in the mud getting their rep up. Also he mentions that being signed to three labels didn’t go in his favor (Interscope, Shady, Griselda) and that he mostly signed to Shady because he A). Wanted to seek mentorship from Eminem and B). He thought that Em and the label could do for him what they did for 50 Cent as far as taking a super street MC and marketing him to the mainstream.

He also mentions having Big records with Big artists that he can’t release to clearances. Seems to me like he was alluding more to Shady and Interscope not being such a good label to get a “push” from as he expected. Said that he only spoke to Em a few times and it was all business.


I get the feeling that he thought signing to a Major would be an opportunity for more exposure and working easily with bigger artists but he basically could have stayed Independent and gotten the same results

He also mentioned that a deal with Roc Nation was on the table at the same time the Shady Records deal was and they went with Em

This is pretty much what I gathered as well. It's crazy how many rapper's rappers really want to sign with Em, despite the results. I know Conway is a huge Eminem fan. Not only that but he has a lot in common with 50 and looks up to 50 a lot. One of his first recordings you can hear online is him flipping the concept of Stan and writing a letter to himself. This was back in 2005/2006 before he got shot and went my the rap name Kannon. It's actually a pretty dope flip.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

Mr. Chow Hall is eerie as hell.

Great closing track.

Here's a video where you can hear Benny rapping the verse to Al. If you listen close you can hear the parts that were edited out.

 

[Arithmetic]

Like I said Benny spoke on how trash Conway contract was on Tana Talk 4.

What song was that?

 

[GetRichOrDieTryin]

How the hell you not reading your contract in this day and age, especially as he said himself he don't trust anyone.

rap is mostly all talk anyways
these guys act real smart in raps but dumb af

 

[Ziggiy]

I wonder how the vinyl situation works. Those early projects like Rejects 2 were on bandcamp, had limited release vinyls etc. Was Conway seeing any money from that? Griselda has sold decent vinyl and merch…or did in the past.

More recently, Conway hasn’t sold nearly enough to see much from sales. New album just bombed and the album from last year bombed too. I like both albums a lot btw, I’m just saying he’s not selling. Flip side Benny just did 20k first week, including 7k physicals.

Conway mentioned he gets money off merch.

 

[Funcrusher]

I wonder how the vinyl situation works. Those early projects like Rejects 2 were on bandcamp, had limited release vinyls etc. Was Conway seeing any money from that? Griselda has sold decent vinyl and merch…or did in the past.

More recently, Conway hasn’t sold nearly enough to see much from sales. New album just bombed and the album from last year bombed too. I like both albums a lot btw, I’m just saying he’s not selling. Flip side Benny just did 20k first week, including 7k physicals.

To be fair tho, 20k in sales won't equal a whole lot of money, especially if 13k of that is streaming. It's a good look for Benny tho, and it might open up new doors.

 

[Atsym Sknyfs]

Right. U get some insurance they give you a damn book. You get a credit card ain’t nobody reading all that chit.

But of course fools can come to the internet and act like u perfect.

actually I do and my wife gets mad at me for taking to long. But i have found some errors then she thanks me

 

[AMcV'88]

Conway sounds like Beans.

Gunn was happy to finesse his own brother and it is kind of getting over looked because Conway didn't have the foresight to get his own lawyer to look over it.

nine times out of ten, Conway would've used the same lawyer as Gunn.. why would he not trust his blood ?

it's easy to see why that happened and its happened plenty of times over the decades with lawyers working on behalf of the label and not the artist that ended up with people getting into fukked up situations.

people saying it was before they were popping...that don't make it any better.

if anything, he shouldn't have even had his brother on papers like that but I don't blame Gunn that much either. his brother was clearly the more talented but it was his vision so if you wanted Con you had to break Gunn off with the bag to get him.

they might not be beefing but he obviously feels/felt a way.. it will have fractured their relationship to an extent. it always does.
they're not wildly successful enough to blow the whole shyt up, so you keep flying the flag and plugging it away.

 

[Legal]

Conway sounds like Beans.

Gunn was happy to finesse his own brother and it is kind of getting over looked because Conway didn't have the foresight to get his own lawyer to look over it.

nine times out of ten, Conway would've used the same lawyer as Gunn.. why would he not trust his blood ?

it's easy to see why that happened and its happened plenty of times over the decades with lawyers working on behalf of the label and not the artist that ended up with people getting into fukked up situations.

people saying it was before they were popping...that don't make it any better.

if anything, he shouldn't have even had his brother on papers like that but I don't blame Gunn that much either. his brother was clearly the more talented but it was his vision so if you wanted Con you had to break Gunn off with the bag to get him.

they might not be beefing but he obviously feels/felt a way.. it will have fractured their relationship to an extent. it always does.
they're not wildly successful enough to blow the whole shyt up, so you keep flying the flag and plugging it away.

The bolded is absolutely key in situations like this.

As dumb as a lot of rappers sound when they say they didn't read the contract, you'd be surprised how they came to that conclusion based on what a lawyer told them. There are a shocking number of cases where the artists actually DOES have a lawyer, but the problem is that the lawyer was probably either referred to them or provided by the label, and is usually the same lawyer, or at least from the same office the label uses. So, in those cases, they're really just executing the services their actual client has either hired or retained them for.

In a perfect world, he would've hired his own third party legal representation to look everything over, but he made the mistake of assuming he was getting exactly what he expected because he was dealing with family.