The Outcome

Buffalo producer ILL Tone Beats was never much for a producer tag. And it’s not because his sample-heavy beats are so immediately identifiable like those of, say, a Timbaland or Swizz Beatz. But the company Tone most frequently keeps—the MCs of Griselda Records and the Black Soprano Family collective—happen to have a way of announcing themselves in the space one might normally reserve for a producer tag (Cue Westside Gunn’s “Boom-Boom Boom-Boom!”). Making a name for himself is hardly ILL Tone’s concern, though. He’s already an integral part of one of rap’s most inventive and exciting movements. He reaffirm this position across *The Outcome*, a project that features the very best of MCs like Benny the Butcher, Conway the Machine, Elcamino, Rome Streetz, and Flee Lord. Those are, of course, hometown heroes, but he’s also got an AZ verse and an interlude with Ghostface Killah talking crazy. So the people who actually need to know who ILL Tone is already do: They’re the ones he’s been making neoclassical hip-hop with for years now.