Westside Gunn is pushing back on rumors that advice from Jay-Z led to a rift within Griselda.
The speculation began after broadcaster Jamil “Mal” Clay claimed on a recent episode of the New Rory & Mal podcast that Jay-Z had advised Gunn to give Conway The Machine and Benny The Butcher equity in Griselda Records.
“Something that I knew for a while, but I just never spoke about it publicly … one of the main reasons why there was kind of like, I guess, a split between Griselda was because Westside Gunn didn’t want to give Benny and Conway five percent of Griselda — let them split 10 percent, which is something Jay-Z had kind of suggested in a meeting with them. Gunn said, ‘no.’ He didn’t wanna do that.” Mal said in the video embedded below.
He continued, “Which to me was shocking when I first heard about it. Now don’t get it twisted, Gunn definitely curated the whole Griselda thing. He got it lit, he got it poppin’, but Griselda is not Griselda without the three of them.”
Elsewhere in the podcast, Mal said the intel came “from Jay-Z's mouth.”
Gunn appeared to reject the claim on Saturday (June 6), embedding Mal’s original video on X and responding, “Everybody wanna go viral so bad shit disgusting [laughing emojis].”
Mal responded, “I’m honestly surprised this is a thing. Going viral is never in my thoughts. I spoke to Con and Benny today.”
It’s unclear if Gunn was denying the existence of any rift or rejecting the specific claim about the equity proposal, or both.
Despite the renewed speculation, Griselda's core members continue to release music together while also focusing on their individual ventures and artist rosters.
Rumors about friction between Gunn, Conway, and Benny have circulated for years, but the trio have repeatedly dismissed claims of serious conflict. They are biological family: Gunn and Conway are half-siblings, and Benny is their cousin. More details about Griselda are available in Complex’s explainer.
On an episode of the Rippin’ 2gether series uploaded last month, Conway confirmed new music from the collective was on the way.
“Breaking news. Expect a Griselda project very near future,” he said near the 24-minute mark in the video linked here.
“It's already in motion. We're doing another tape,” Conway said. “I spoke with Benny the other day. We probably going to do something, that's still up in the air. But you know, we cooking. Everything fine, everything good.
“We good. It's never no beefing, you know what I mean? You got to understand: we family. We don't hate each other, We don't dislike each other, it ain’t none of that shit. We love each other to death, we all doing our own shit, moving, and having other fun.”
