Westside Gunn - Who Made the Sunshine ALBUM REVIEW

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Well, this is three times now. I made this website back in April, and this is the most times I’ve covered a specific artist here. This is Westside Gunn’s third project this year, with one of my favorite rap records from 2020 so far Pray for Paris and his victory lap FLYGOD IS AN AWESOME GOD 2 both hitting the market this year. While Pray for Paris was a grand showcase and example of a curator at his artistic peak, FIAAG2 felt incredibly rushed and I haven’t even come back to it since its 3 months ago. Now, on his major studio debut in collaboration with Eminem’s Shady Records, Gunn is back to the curator role on Who Made the Sunshine. While he isn’t the best rapper on the Griselda label, his role as the caretaker of his albums are unmatched. I’m excited, so let’s just get right into Who Made the Sunshine.

Who Made the Sunshine is a hip-hop album with jazz and boom-bap influences. A good way to describe this record is ‘less is more.’ Specifically, this has to do with the beats. The typical jazzy, looped, and lo-fi aesthetics are here and better than ever. What makes this so different is how Gunn deploys his collaborators. Benny and Conway show off their chemistry with Gunn on both “The Butcher & The Blade” and “98 Sabres,” while Armani Caesar sounds so much better on “Liz Loves Luger” with her R&B-leaning verse. Other features from the likes of Busta Rhymes, Black Thought, and even not one but two features from Slick Rick (!!) sound absolutely insane over these minimalist beats, but somehow become maximalist when they have their part of the song. While Gunn does what he can, though, he just doesn’t seem like he’s fit for rapping. Yes, he’s stated that he plans on retiring from the mic next year, but that hopefully doesn’t mean he stops with his curation and production chops.

While I do prefer Pray for Paris for its cohesion and Gunn’s overall performance on that, Who Made the Sunshine is a killer album. Sunshine has higher highs that Paris, but it has lower lows too. If Sunshine and Paris were put into one double album, this would be one of my favorite albums this year. Sunshine is a brick in Griselda’s empire, and this is one of the bricks on the very bottom holding everything up.


8/10


Stream Who Made the Sunshine here

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