Conway the Machine

Shot in the head, and then a career

Demond Price was born in Buffalo, New York, on 16 February 1982, and spent much of his twenties moving in and out of the criminal justice system before music became the plan rather than the sideline. The turning point was violent and almost fatal: in 2012 he was shot in the head, neck and shoulder. Doctors feared paralysis. What he was left with instead was partial facial paralysis, and with it the thick, dragging delivery that has become the most recognisable thing about him on a record.

That voice arrived at the right moment for a label built by his own family. His brother, Westside Gunn, founded Griselda Records in 2014, and the independent releases that followed — crude artwork, cheap-sounding snare, no radio ambitions whatsoever — put Buffalo back on the map of American rap for the first time in decades. Conway was the harder, blunter half of the pairing, and the one whose limitations were an asset: a man who cannot fully control one side of his mouth sounds like he means everything he says.

On 3 March 2017 Griselda signed to Eminem's Shady Records, a move that gave a regional cult operation major-label distribution and a great deal more attention than its founders had planned for.

The Shady years and the albums that came out of them

The Shady deal did not translate into chart numbers, and nobody involved seems to have expected it to. Conway's debut studio album, From King to a God, arrived in 2020 and peaked at number 126 on the Billboard 200. God Don't Make Mistakes followed in 2022 and reached 175. The commercial ceiling was low; the critical standing was not, and the records travelled much further than their sales suggested.

The more interesting work in that stretch was collaborative. Lulu, made with The Alchemist in 2020, is a short, airless set that pairs Conway's delivery with loops that barely resolve. La Maquina arrived in 2021. Hall & Nash 2, made with Westside Gunn and The Alchemist in 2023, was a reminder of what the Buffalo axis sounded like at full strength.

Conway announced his departure from both Griselda and Shady in February 2022 and set up Drumwork, his own label. Won't He Do It landed in 2023 and Slant Face Killah in 2024, the latter giving its name to a touring cycle that took him round American clubs and into Europe.

A record made out of a bad few years

You Can't Kill God with Bullets, his fifth studio album, came out on 12 December 2025 through Drumwork. It runs just over an hour across 17 tracks plus a bonus cut, 'Don't Even Feel Real (Dreams)' with Heather Victoria, and the production credits are unusually wide for him: Apollo Brown, Daringer and The Alchemist alongside Timbaland, with guest turns from Roc Marciano, G Herbo, Tony Yayo, DJ Whoo Kid and Lady London. Three singles preceded it — 'Se7enteen5ive' on 1 August, 'Diamonds' on 21 November and 'BMG' on release day.

Speaking to Uproxx on 15 December 2025, Conway described the title as something that predated the record. 'It started as a feeling before it was ever a title,' he said. 'I've been through a lot these last couple years — injuries, business stress, people switching up, the internet talking crazy. And on top of that, I literally survived being shot in the head.' On what wore him down after the success arrived: 'What weighed on me was expectations. Once you get successful, everybody wants something. Meanwhile, I'm dealing with depression, loss, pain.'

He was similarly unsentimental about running a label. Asked about building Drumwork apart from Griselda, he pointed at the people who had come to him: 'Seeing how people disguise personal wants as work. They say let me work with you, but they really want me to fund their lifestyle.' The Timbaland track came about with no plan at all — 'Tim randomly hit me: I need you to smoke this beat' — and was originally meant for Timbaland's own EP.

Reviews were warm. RapReviews gave the album 8 out of 10 and Stereoboard four stars out of five.

Where he stands in 2026

The question that follows Conway everywhere is whether the original Griselda trio — him, Westside Gunn and Benny the Butcher — will record together again. He has spent much of 2026 managing it. After a clip from a show circulated and was read as evidence of a split, he took to social media to call the speculation unfounded and to complain that rap culture inflates small moments into crises.

Then, on 7 May 2026, he went further. On an episode of Rippin' 2Gether, the hip-hop card-collecting show he co-hosts with Ian Schwartzman, he strongly implied that a Griselda reunion project is actually in motion. He stopped short of naming a date or a title, and nothing has been formally announced since.

His own release schedule has not slowed. A joint project with DJ Whoo Kid, I Heard You Paint Houses, is listed for 2026, continuing the pattern of a solo album every eighteen months or so with collaborative records filling every gap.

The rooms he is playing now

The current run is a headline club tour rather than an arena play, and the venue sizes tell the story plainly: Lost Horizon HQ in Bristol, where he appears on 29 October 2026, holds 350 people. The European leg opened at Casilino Sky Park in Rome on 18 September and Parkteatret Scene in Oslo on 19 October before crossing to Britain.

Four British dates are on sale. Brighton's CHALK takes the first on 26 October, London follows on 28 October, Bristol on 29 October, and Manchester's Gorilla closes the British end of the year on 29 November. A Birmingham show at O2 Academy2 on 25 October is listed as cancelled. The continental dates run through November: Club Bahnhof Ehrenfeld in Cologne on the 1st, Lido in Berlin on the 2nd, Uebel & Gefährlich in Hamburg on the 3rd, L'Élysée Montmartre in Paris on the 6th, Rennes on the 7th, Belgrade on the 14th, Flex in Vienna on the 21st and Heidelberg on the 26th. A Miami date at Lincoln's Beard Brewing Company is booked for 5 December.

Critical opinion on him as a live act is respectable rather than ecstatic. The aggregator Liverate puts him at 73 per cent across four critic reviews, summarising the consensus as a watchable performer with decent shows; the Danish magazine Gaffa scored a March 2024 performance at 67 per cent. Recorded setlists are thin — setlist.fm logs a show at Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix on 11 June 2026 — which is typical of an artist whose audience is more likely to be filming than filing.