Westside Gunn, the renowned rapper, label head, and famed native of Buffalo, New York, will open “the illest Boutique ART gallery my city has ever seen,” according to a post he made to Instagram earlier this week.
Buffalo Kids, as the business is known, will be “conveniently next to Starbucks and Footlocker” in the Walden Galleria Mall, he points out.
Gunn, who made his major-label debut on Eminem’s Shady Records last year, has collaborated on tracks with giants like Jay Z and Lil’ Wayne. He also heads up his own label, Griselda Records, which started out as, and continues to exist as, a fashion line.
Gunn did not immediately respond to Artnet News’s requests for more information on the gallery.
The cover of every Griselda release is a specially commissioned painting. Virgil Abloh’s interpretation of Caravaggio’s David With the Head of Goliath adorns the cover of Gunn’s record Pray for Paris. Isaac Pelayo painted Liz Taylor with a third eye in her forehead for the cover of rapper Armani Caesar’s album The Liz. Gunn collects Pelayo’s work heavily.
He estimates his collection, which is stocked with neo-Pop art, at $1 million, he told Business Insider. He has commissioned as many as 100 works.
“I literally just got a penthouse just for my art. It’s like a museum.”
“I approach everything with art in mind first,” the rapper told Business Insider. “It’s kind of like a religion with me.”