Conway The Machine at Turner Hall: Concert Review

Conway the Machine! Wow!

We’re deep into Hip Hop’s 50th anniversary and there have been a myriad of fantastic celebrations with the FORCE Tour and HIPHOP50 to name a couple. This thing of ours was started in the Bronx and has spread to all the boroughs of NYC, our schools and boardrooms and the world.

Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens (Get the Money, Manhattan and Long Island have all had major icons in the genre but we cannot forget about Buffalo. Upstate NYC artist Conway the Machine brought his witty, hard bars focusing on everything from mental health to deleting his opps.

Recovering from a fractured right tibia and dislocated kneecap (ouch!) Conway took the stage with the dope cane and doper bars featuring tracks from his latest project, ‘Won’t He Do It’ and standouts from the pantheon of his Griselda records catalog: ‘Blakk Tape’, ‘Piano Love’ and ‘Rahbannga’ to name a few. The jovial MC’s on-stage banter dazzled the crowd and provided a contrast of comic relief and warmth to offset the gritty bangers that echoed through the Historic Turner Hall Ballroom.

Opener Sauce Walka brought frenetic energy and mega-lit bars to the table, as well. Hailing from Houston, he showed a lot of reverence for the 414 aka Spillwaukee. The Texas cyclone ran through a litany of his tracks including the ubiquitous ‘ONLYFANS’ and had the crowd geeked from grand opening to grand closing. Motivational, aspirational and very live are the best way to describe the content of the music and energy of the evening. This show was supposed to happen earlier this year but the prolonged wait did little to keep the Milwaukee crowd from showing up and showing love to these remarkable genre-bending artists.

Luckily for us the Conway and Sauce Walka tour continues on, ‘Won’t He Do It’