Everybody Can't Go - Benny The Butcher: Review

Review by Lav:

A few years ago when I did my deep dive into Griselda the member who most impressed me was Westside Gunn, who was fresh off his excellent Pray For Paris at the time. Since then Conway The Machine has indulged on an incredibly prolific run of music sporting massive highlights of his own like his 2022 effort God Don't Make Mistakes, likely my favorite project from any of the trio yet. Despite being arguably the most consistent of the bunch, I've still been waiting for the DEFINITIVE Benny The Butcher album. And even though Benny spent the last year hyping up this project, it still doesn't feel like the best work he's capable of. 

Sonically I can say Everybody Can't Go has more variety than I was anticipating, but it all still exists within the tight spectrum of Benny's comfort zone. Opener Jermaine's Graduation has a glistening piano beat that feels like The Alchemist doing his best Madlib impression with strong results. The production on TMVTL is similarly excellent featuring two entirely different but equally great halves bridged by a great beat switch. 

Another element of this record I was anticipating was strong features and it delivered. Big Dog has one of the most talked about Lil Wayne verses I've heard in a while and for good reason. It's a hard-hitting crossover that I loved hearing even if some of Wayne's dog bars are so silly I can't help but laugh. Perhaps even better is Snoop Dogg on Back Again. I wasn't prepared for just how good the song was gonna be. Benny's flows are infectious and the constantly shifting tempo and energy gives the song so much life. 

Surprisingly, one of my favorite features on the album came from Armani Caesar on Buffalo Kitchen Club. But one of the most notable cuts is the often-included Griselda posse cut, this time hilariously titled Griselda Express. While I'm not crazy about Westside Gunn's hook on the track pretty much everybody else brings their A-game. I really think this should be the finale of the record because its intensity unfortunately smothers the otherwise decent but more reserved closed Big Tymers.

One Foot In and Pillow Talk & Slander both deliver decent guest verses but fall short of being great songs through and through. The former is one of the hardest-hitting tracks sonically and Stove God Cooks is great on the track but it has an impossibly goofy hook. It's kind of hard to take anything on the track seriously once you've heard it. Pillow Talk by comparison sports a solid Jadakiss verse but everything around it is underwhelming. Its worst moment is an unintentionally hilarious bar about Benny discussing politics on the news. The context of him agreeing to stop talking about politics publicly after endorsing Donald Trump last year takes some of the luster off the bar. 

As is often the case with Benny's projects, there are often songs that just feel straight up beneath his pen game. BRON was dropped as a single which is a red flag because it's the least interesting song on the album. I think a lot of the basketball punchlines are SO played out in rap music and the hashtag flows are just plain rough. Hot To Rap is a kind of cute song that is themed around being an actual series of instructions on how to rap, though Benny doesn't take the gimmick as far as Injury Reserve do. The worst song on the record is the title track which is an insanely glitzy 2000s rap throwback. It's got lyrics about Trump and a Kyle Banks hook that unfortunately fit right in. If you have a LOT of nostalgia for that era maybe you might like it but there's not much here for me.

Unfortunately, Everybody Can't Go isn't quite the album I was hoping it would be. Despite that though, Benny The Butcher is still a certified professional who's capable of conjuring plenty of hard-hitting bars and impressive retrospection. The production on the record is definitely an improvement over the last few Benny projects, even if some of the songs here aren't as conceptually strong. What results is a decent rap record that fans will definitely want to hear and pick out some highlights from, but not exactly the next great Griselda release. 6/10

For more Griselda, check out my review of Conway The Machine's God Don't Make Mistakes