The New Conway Mixtape You'll Probably Never Hear
The data mining drag behind Conway The Machine's 'I HEARD YOU PAINT HOUSES.' +reviews of 12k Gotti; Homeboy Sandman
If you've attended a Conway The Machine concert anytime in the past five or so years, chances are you've been exposed to some aspect of the Drumwork Music Group roster.
Like so many before him, the Buffalo rapper parlayed his success into helming a record label of his own, bringing a selection of other artists like Jae Skeeze and GooseByTheWay along for the ride both in-studio and live on stage. Even if you haven't been following Drumwork all that closely, its signees have regularly appeared at Conway's shows as confirmed openers or, in other instances, as previously unannounced performers during his own set times.
Again, this phenomenon is nothing all that new, a familiar play executed by countless rappers meant to raise the profiles (or at least boost the egos) of those existing in their orbit. In practice, such in-person co-signs can help elevate artists, as when someone like MIKE brings out those signed to his 10k roster on national tours. However, such tactics can sometimes misfire with audiences who, quite reasonably, would prefer more from the headliner they paid to see than a different one they have no existing connection with.
In this post-Griselda moment, with Westside Gunn focused on his 4th Rope wrestling promotion and limiting his 2026 musical output thus far to a few scattered features, the opportunity for his half-brother Conway to own the broader brand narrative seems evident to the point of obviousness. With his solid late 2025 album You Can't Kill God With Bullets in the rearview, the time seems right for, say, a new EP from him akin to Benny The Butcher's fan-feeding The Plugs I Met 2.5 if not a full-length project.
And, to Conway's credit, he technically did put out a mixtape in June called I HEARD YOU PAINT HOUSES, its title referencing mob hitman Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran. Hosted by DJ Whoo Kid, the project can be heard officially and legally by taking the following steps:
1) visit a link hosted by Y Combinator-backed, AI-powered music CRM company Laylo
2) explicitly grant Laylo a number of Spotify permissions, including the ability to add/remove things from your Spotify library (pro tip: you can hit 'Cancel' instead of 'Agree')
3) go to back to your inbox to snag an [Untitled] link that brings you to a Untitled sign-in page
4) log into [Untitled] using your Apple or Google account login credentials
5) click a Buy button to purchase the mixtape via a Stripe checkout process for $20 plus $1 [Untitled] fee
(There's also a version of this process that begins with texting a phone number, FYI.)
For those who venture down that byzantine path of brazen personal data mining, with no fewer than five different companies involved in a single $21 transaction, what you end up with is access to an [Untitled] streaming page and the option to export 16 tracks as .m4a files. Adding to the inconvenience, these files lack metadata like track numbers and complete song titles, so you'll need to import those files into your preferred music player, and then manually organize all of them one-by-one to get the intended track order sorted. By the end, you'll have about 42 minutes of audio, with three out of the 16 tracks being skits.
For everyone else, it's as if I HEARD YOU PAINT HOUSES simply doesn't exist.
The mixtape's rollout ostensibly targets Conway's most ardent and devoted fans, yet at every step of the process it treats those listeners shabbily. It defies the logic and business savvy that built Griselda (and, by extension, Drumwork) into the cultural force it became. Not including IHYPH on streaming platforms is more than reasonable, and artists should be paid for their work, whatever they wish to charge provided the audience is willing to pay. But this Laylo scheme overreaches to the point where more listeners will consider piracy than not. (I've seen multiple YouTube videos that purport to have the full mixtape, so that theory has already been proven.) And some fans, myself included, will likely come out of the other end of the scraping funnel feeling unhappy with the various intrusive touchpoints, and even resentful of Conway for subjecting them to it.
Indeed, for everyone else, unless this gets a less convoluted release down the road, IHYPH will remain a curio at best, but more likely an unknown. For them, there's been with little more this year from the self-described Slant Face Killah than some guest verses–including one on GooseByTheWay's just-released Nature Boy–and a digital reissue of 2017's G.O.A.T., the latter via Drumwork and Daringer Records as opposed to its original home label of Griselda/Fashion Rebels.
As if that weren't concerning enough, the Drumwork brand seems to be downshifting towards dormancy. Once heralded as the label's first signing, Jae Skeese hasn't dropped a project with the imprint since 2023. SK Da King, who released Horus there in 2021, has since dropped elsewhere. Both artists feature on the aforementioned Nature Boy, though one has to wonder how recently those verses came in. Furthermore, none of the other artists that appeared on 2023's Drumwork The Album compilation have put out projects with the label since.
Some have likely noticed that Conway parted ways with EMPIRE as Drumwork's distribution partner, with last year's YCKGWB coming via Roc Nation and now Nature Boy via Merlin. Despite the evident quality of the latter, it stands to reason that it could be the last Drumwork release that isn't a Conway record, and the final step to becoming a vanity label in every sense of the term.
Homeboy Sandman & Jack Splash, Resonance Frequency
Between his runs for Stones Throw and Mello Music Group and his recent side quests with U Don't Deserve This Beautiful Art, Homeboy Sandman has amassed an enviable indie rap discography. Aligned here with Jack Splash, a producer known for his work with CeeLo Green and Kendrick Lamar, among others, the Queens native jumpstarts his Big Sand legacy-building phase with the funk-infused Resonance Frequency. Their synergistic potency comes through right from the opening bits of "TWENTYFOURSEVEN" and its minimalist yet roiling successor "ARROW." Not surprisingly, the increasingly Kool Keith-esque rapper's longstanding lyrical idiosyncrasies have naturally evolved (or, perhaps, metastasized), evidenced by his quasi-conspiratorial concerns on "INNER REALM" and MAHA-lite pot shots over other people's dietary and lifestyle choices on "WEED STORES EVERYWHERE." That said, he's clearly comfortable in thinking differently and defiantly, unapologetic about principled sobriety on "SIGNAL" and righteously wary of capitalism's individualized grip on "YEAH YEAH." Even if you aren't adverse to seed oils, it's quite easy to lock into Splash's gilded grooves and vibe with Sandman's vigorous verses.
12k Gotti, MADLIFE
A standout presence amid MIKE's already talent-heavy 10k roster, Cleveland's own 12k Gotti operates in a specialized space where lucid lyrics come couched in progressive, loosely trap-informed sounds. Less than a year after the abstract yet cohesive 800°, his airy, oddly immersive MADLIFE looks to permeate the humid fog of hip-hop's summer doldrums. Reuniting with that prior project's Smoov Beats and wtfbennie, along with several other cutting-edge beatmakers including Tony Seltzer, he floats with his flows as he drops plainspoken and, at times, plaintive bars on cuts like "CLIMAX" and "MENTION ME." Its title a nod to a hometown NBA hero, "KYLE KORVER" gives him ample swaggering space as AngelSeason's melodious production swirls around his moves. He channels Lil Wayne circa 2008, literally and figuratively, on the aggressive "LeBRON JAMES INTERLUDE" and pays homage to yet another Louisiana influence on the banging "NO LIMIT." Notably, Gotti balances such chest puff opportunities with R&B heart on the dreamlike "ALL I NEED," a late-in-the-game highlight. Any doubts of his pen potential should be quelled with the closing "CRUNCH TIME FREESTYLE."
Three new tracks to snack on...
Cletus Strap, "nonchalant (feat. Earl Sweatshirt)"
Mondo Slade, "Bombs Away (feat. BoriRock)"
Open Mike Eagle & Kenny Segal, "She Swear I'm Colorblind (feat. billy woods)"
