New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently boasted that the Buffalo Bills are the only true-blue NY football team, as they’re the only one that actually plays in-state. (Both the Giants and Jets play in a stadium in New Jersey). Buffalo rapper Westside Gunn has been trumpeting a similar claim in the realm of rap, dubbing himself the “New King of New York” despite being from a city upstate that’s more known for its snowfall than hip-hop. But while MCs from the NYC boroughs have tried to shake the dust off their sound with trap hi-hats, Gunn and his Griselda Records cohorts have proudly embraced the loops and drum breaks of the city’s “Golden Age” and revamped them. So much so that the richest rapper to ever make it out of Brooklyn recently gave them a management deal.

On Hitler Wears Hermes 7, the formula doesn’t change, with Gunn rapping ruthlessly about life on the streets of Buffalo over glistening barely touched samples. With each edition of the series, the bars seem to get a little harder, the beats a little prettier, and Gunn’s persona comes further into focus. The project opens with DJ Drama, whose Gangsta Grillz mixtapes once served as proclamations of stardom for artists like Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy, decreeing that the “Buffalo kids done did it.” It’s a sentiment Gunn circles back to often on Hermes 7 with crass lines like, “First nigga in my city with a Rolls/Fuck two bad bitches at the Lowe’s,” injecting a conventional rap boast with some of his hometown’s blue-collar attitude.

Gunn’s voice is a nasally high-pitched yap, somewhere between Brooklyn rappers AZ and Troy Ave, and is perfectly tuned for talking shit. “At the Roc Nation brunch with my tool on, don’t disrespect us,” he cooly warns on “GONDEK.” Elsewhere, on “Connie’s Son,” he crows that he’s “made half at least half a mil’ ridin’ Mega buses,” a clever reference to the cheap bus service that’s been exposed more than once as a tool used by traffickers to run drugs across state lines. Griselda crew members Conway The Machine and Benny The Butcher show up to deliver equally gritty verses, as well as a surprisingly in-form Fat Joe, who harkens back to his DITC days on “Kelly’s Korner” by lamenting how he once got his hand put in a meat grinder for stealing a mafia Don’s car.

The production, handled by a who’s who of boom-bap aficionados like Alchemist, Statik Selektah and Griselda in-house producer Daringer, is as lovely as the lyrics are ugly. The swirling keys on “Broadway Jones” sound more like something jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi laid down for A Charlie Brown Christmas than a backdrop to an ode to cooking crack. The soaring vocal sample on the frontend of “Undertaker vs. Goldberg,” meanwhile, throws Gunn’s violent “doot, doot, doot, doot” adlibs into a warm swirl. The only moments the beats come up short are when their simplicity veers into redundancy, like a few minutes into “Undertaker,” which could have been bolstered by some drums.

This could be said for other aspects of Hermes 7 as well, a project that’s endearingly straightforward but has a firm ceiling as a result. By its midpoint, you pretty much know how each song will unfold, a one-note dish that’s tasty on first bite but starts to lose its flavor by the end. Make no mistake, this is who Westside Gunn is: He makes one kind of song and does it well. Putting out a niche product has ironically led him, along with the rest of Griselda Records, to a larger audience. But even recipes for success can be improved upon.