Westside Gunn's 2024 release, Still Praying, marks a significant return to form and the conclusion of a thematic trilogy that began with the acclaimed Pray for Paris and continued through And Then You Pray For Me. Released on November 1, 2024, by Griselda Records, this project is narrated by the legendary DJ Drama, lending it the high-energy, curated atmosphere of a classic Gangsta Grillz mixtape. The Vision Behind Still Praying
Drama, sensing Gunn's introspection, nodded encouragingly. "What's on your mind, Gunn?" he asked. Westside Gunn DJ Drama Still Praying Zip
Then a beat dropped—his beat. The one from Prayer Hands & Parachutes. The eleven-stream beat. But flipped. Chopped. Perfected. Someone had remixed him. Westside Gunn 's 2024 release, Still Praying ,
It was the Holy Grail. Not the official release—that had dropped months ago on streaming—but the original. The one with the alternate samples, the raw Conway verse before it got cut, and the exclusive 19th track that DJ Drama had teased in a since-deleted tweet. Leaked from a hard drive in a Rochester storage unit. Passed through six hands before landing in Leo’s DMs. Pacing: The middle third drags with similar tempos
DJ Drama, meanwhile, is the king of the Gangsta Grillz mixtape era. When these two forces collided on previous projects like 10 (2022) and And Then You Pray For Me (2023), they created a sonic bridge between the 2005 mixtape boom and 2025’s lush, sample-heavy production.
The aesthetic is heavily influenced by professional wrestling, a long-time passion for Gunn: