Griselda

Griselda

Artist

Griselda is a Buffalo-born independent record label founded in 2012 by Westside Gunn.

The core of the label and collective also includes his half-brother Conway the Machine (they share the same father), their cousin Benny The Butcher, and in-house producer Daringer.

When you think of Griselda as a human body, Gunn is the brain, Benny is the muscles, Daringer is the respiratory system, and I am the heart.

– Conway the Machine, The Bootleg Kev Podcast

In the late 1990s, Gunn, Conway, Benny and Benny’s older brother, MachineGun Black formed a crew called the Forerunners. In the 2000s, a pre-incarnation of Griselda was called Street Entertainment, made up of Gunn, Conway (known at the time as Kannon), Benny, MachineGun and FreeCutter. After ‘ChineGun was shot and killed in 2006, the crew disbanded.

In 2004, Conway and Benny became part of DJ Shay’s record label, Buff City Records. It wasn’t until the release of Westside Gunn’s Hitler Wears Hermes in 2012 that Griselda was founded. The label was named after Colombian drug empress Griselda Blanco and started as a branch of Westside Gunn’s clothing brand, Fashion Rebels.

Beside Westside Gunn, the first Griselda roster featured rappers Conway and Mach-Hommy and producers Daringer and Camoflauge Monk. Around 2017, Mach-Hommy left the label and was kind of replaced by Benny The Butcher, who already founded his own label, Black Soprano Family.

The collective started to put themselves on the map of the hip hop underground scene thanks to their prolific output and their sound inspired by boom-bap and ‘90s East Coast hip hop, created by Daringer.

In 2017, Griselda signed a distribution deal with Shady Records for “solo and joint projects from Westside Gunn and Conway.” In 2019, Westside and Benny signed a management deal with Roc Nation.

In 2020, Griselda signed Armani Caesar, a long-time friend of the Griselda family and their first female act, Boldy James, and YN Billy, the younger member of the label to date. Rome Streetz joined the label in the following year.

In 2021, Griselda released their first feature film, Conflicted, directed by Amire K Reed and starring Westside Gunn and Benny The Butcher in secondary roles. The story centers around an ex-con who struggles to do right after being released from prison.


Griselda core members:
- Westside Gunn
- Conway the Machine
- Benny The Butcher
- Daringer

Griselda current roster:
- Armani Caesar
- Boldy James
- Mach-Hommy
- Rome Streetz
- The Heartbreakers, production team formed by Camoflauge Monk, Conductor Williams, and Denny Laflare
- YN Billy
- Estee Nack

Affiliates:
- DJ Shay (R.I.P.)
- Black Soprano Family
- Drumwork Music Group
- El Camino
- Keisha Plum
- Stove God Cooks
- Flee Lord
- Billie Essco
- Tiona Deniece
- Shots