Last Friday (Oct. 13), Westside Gunn liberated his fifth studio LP, And Then You Pray For Me, which serves as a sequel to his 2020 drop Pray For Paris. The project consists of 21 songs and collaborations alongside Conway The Machine, Benny The Butcher, JID, DJ Drama, Giggs, Ty Dolla $ign, EST Gee, Boldy James, and more.

On Wednesday (Oct. 18), GRAMMY.com published an interview with the Buffalo veteran, who spoke on his new album, which he previously confirmed would be the final solo full-length offering of his career.

“For the first time, people are actually getting to see the inside of Westside Gunn’s life. I think that’s one of the things that I lacked on, was letting people in. If I would have let people in a long time ago, I’d be way bigger. But everything is about time, and I’m not tripping,” he explained. “Before I hang up the mic, I still want to kind of give you a journey with the music. This new project, it’s a super different vibe. I’ve never made an album sound like this. It’s the [most] perfect art piece that I could have possibly created.”

Westside made sure to pay his respects to the late Virgil Abloh, who was credited with designing the artwork for And Then You Pray For Me. “[He] was an icon. So to have Virgil cooking up for you is already legendary,” he said. “This don’t happen to nobody from Buffalo, man. But when he was cooking, he was making me multiple pieces.”

He also revealed that the original plan was for there to be a trilogy of Pray albums. “I was gonna have the Mona Lisa be the picture that represents all three of them together. I was thinking [of a] box set with a Mona Lisa front and three different covers inside.” While this doesn’t look to be a reality any longer, Westside did promise that a Griselda project would be making landfall sometime in 2024.