38 Spesh & Conway the Machine are “Speshal Machinery” (Album Review)
Speshal Machinery is a newly formed New York superduo consisting of Rochester emcee/producer & TCF Music Group founder 38 Spesh as well as Buffalo emcee, entrepreneur, Drumwork Music Group founder & my personal favorite of the Griselda Records roster Conway the Machine. These guys have worked with one another on numerous instances like “2 23’s” or more recently “Lalo”, but are looking to kicking things up a notch by coming together for an eponymous full-length debut album.
The intro sets it off with drumless organs so both MCs can trade the mic back & forth with one another excellently for about a minute & a half whereas “Latex Gloves” featuring Lloyd Banks goes for a groovier direction sonically talking about pushing weight. “Last Week” dives into spacey boom bap territory boasting that they were gone 3 days flat the week leading into “Been Through” featuring Elcamino finding the trio making it clear that people don’t know everything each artist has experienced up to this point over horns, kicks & snares.
The title track is sample-based boom bap heater talking about both of them being as rare form as they come just before “Fireplace” is more of a 38 Spesh solo cut lasting only a couple minutes ruggedly comparing the trap house to a place for domestic fire with an angelic loop on top of kicks & snares. La Maquina returns for the angelic boom bap single “Goodfellas” featuring Benny the Butcher so all 3 of them can air out those salty that they ain’t on their level, but then “Unruly” works some jazzy undertones into the fold explaining how disorderly they are.
“Made Bosses” draws near the end of Speshal Machinery’s eponymous debut by cooking up a luxurious boom bap ballad with Emanny on the hook boasting about the fact that both of them have made it in the industry & “We Outside” featuring Che Noir & Pharoahe Monch closes out the album in the form of a 3-minute soulful barfest.
TCF & Griselda have long maintained a mutual respect & prosperous working relationship with one another like I mentioned at the beginning, so it made since for Spesh & Con to form a duo & drop a full-length album together because I’m positive that it’s a little bit better than the Pain Provided Profit EP that Conway dropped with Jae Skeese earlier on in the year. 38 Spesh’s production is stronger & he keeps up with the Drumwork founder on the lyrical end just fine.
Score: 8/10