Conway The Machine is preparing to release his Shady Records debut, God Don’t Make Mistakes, on February 25. The Buffalo-bred emcee dropped the “Stressed” single as a precursor to the project.
Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe caught up with Conway The Machine to talk about “Stressed” featuring Wallo267. The conversation also included Conway discussing his personal musical inspirations.
“Jay-Z, 2Pac, Eminem, so on and so forth. Pretty long list of guys like that. I took to music as something for me to escape, to just have, where I could kind of take my mind off things and focus on the music,” explained the former Griselda roster member.
Eminem’s influence on Conway The Machine as a recording artist played a role in the New Yorker signing to Em’s Shady Records label. Conway addressed his decision to ink a deal with the Universal Music Group-backed company.
“Just being able to create and get mentorship from Eminem… that’s one of my favorite artists of all time, my favorite emcees of all time. So I’m just excited about having Eminem as a big brother,” Conway told Zane Lowe. “That pretty much sold and sealed the deal for me.”
The Machine continued, “Sometimes it can be a lot of pressure when you sign to a major label. It was important to me to still be able to feed my diehard fans and my core audience but still show some sort of growth. The approach was pretty much the same, I just had those pressures in the back of my mind. It wasn’t really pressure, I just wanted to make sure I feed my fans, my diehards on this one.”