LULU

“I’m from where the kids don’t get a new jacket in fall/Roach in the cereal and every spoon black in the drawer.” Good to see you too, Conway the Machine. Really, could these guys get any grimier? How about making your mom sell food to afford your coffin (“14 KI’s”)? Or scattering your body across the grass like leaves in fall (“Calvin”)? As with all Conway’s best stuff—and the best of the Shady Records-affiliated Griselda crew in general—the violence here isn’t explosive or cathartic but atmospheric, hypnotic, the flicker of a badly wired lightbulb or a weird hum from the apartment downstairs. And it’s hard to think of a better match for the Buffalo rapper\'s unhurried slur than LA producer The Alchemist, whose beats don’t boom or bap so much as creep, grimace, and circle in the waters like a bad mood.