Yelawolf: Trunk Muzik/ TM 0-60 / Radioactive

no one is grading (ahem) various black gangster rappers on the curve of 'redundant personas'

i should definitely clarify that i can see where rappers we DON'T like would get criticized for being redundant -- thinking of mad nyc rappers & drake being a knock off of wayne and now people being knock offs of drake -- but i mean certainly we were praising waka, for instance, for reviving a persona

idk how real yelawolf's "persona" is but on record he convinces - he evokes that persona and that environment really well in the language he uses and his voice; it doesn't become a cliché in his hands, he comes at it from varying angles; and he doesn't limit himself to it, either.

He feels pretty different to Bubba to me. Bubba constructs and then fake-hides-behind his down home ignance to a much greater degree - i.e. Bubba and Kid Rock are closer to each other than Yelawolf is to either I reckon (obv this schtick works really well for Bubba; I feel rather more ambivalent re Kid Rock).

In his actual rapping Yelawolf doesn't seem to be flaunting his white southernness topically or stylistically to nearly the same extent. To the extent it bleeds through on tunes like "Pop The Trunk" or "I Wish" or "Love Is Not Enough" the "set up" feels pretty minimal, if only because he almost always strains the issue through descriptive storytelling.

Like, after seeing the "Pop The Trunk" clip I can see how the track plays the old white dad's violence of the first verse against the violence of his mostly black friendship circle in the second, but it would never have occurred to me think that or to go "YES I SEE WHAT YOU'RE DOING".

TBH if there's a "character" I associate Yelawolf with it's the younger partner-in-crime in Breaking Bad.

i feel like you guys are being kind of cynical -- of course the white trash thing is a good marketing tool & since he grew up poor (as far as we know) & not like asher roth there's no real card checking going on, but what is the guy supposed to do? act like he's not white trash from alabama? what 'persona' do you want him to 'assume' deej?

i mean there's definitely a double standard here -- like, no one is grading (ahem) various black gangster rappers on the curve of 'redundant personas', so i'm not sure why yelawolf is getting this intense scrutiny & skepticism?

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, November 23, 2010 3:34 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

we totally grade black rappers this way too! we hate drake remember? i like waka because he does feel unique

i think yela is getting it bcuz of the video/clothing/projected image not matching the rapping style...not saying its fair i just cant help but feel like fans are latching onto some projected country-ness/real-ness that doesnt exist. i liked yela a lot more when he was anonymous white dude from the g-side album! bcuz, like, it was all about his rapping. the theatricality of rap is v important imo

also i really like 'pop the trunk' so i cant really say its the 'problem' here

also some personas, like anono-thug from queensbridge, play themselves better as archetypal things than others do. i dunno, i feel like lee harvey from lapdance sold this better even if he was 6000x worse rapper.

yela is, like, to adept for the image his projecting. it still feels contradictory

i would like to note i observed early on my argument itt would be somewhat weird & challopy

yela is, like, too adept for the image hes projecting.

Was kinda surprised by the emergent great white hope of country-ness angle because initially I thought yela's visual style was more of a straight skater thing, which seems pretty solidly suburban to me. At any rate his actual look seems to project "trenchcoat dude listening to linkin park" rather than "country-ness" to me.

i'm kinda lolling now just at the words "harvey from lapdance"

also some personas, like anono-thug from queensbridge, play themselves better as archetypal things than others do.

i don't think this is true

TBH if there's a "character" I associate Yelawolf with it's the younger partner-in-crime in Breaking Bad.

Hah, I had this too, might just be all the meth references though.

yela doesn't code as country at all to me, there are no sonic signifiers and he doesn't affect it at all (on record) - i don't think he feels suburban either but i'm not really sure how to break down the various poor white trailer park demographics in the US. if he's attached to anything outside of hip-hop it's obviously hard rock - this album is basically rock in places and he's spoken of it in interviews.

i just cant help but feel like fans are latching onto some projected country-ness/real-ness that doesnt exist

who are "yelawolf fans" now?!

i feel like you guys are being kind of cynical -- of course the white trash thing is a good marketing tool & since he grew up poor (as far as we know) & not like asher roth there's no real card checking going on, but what is the guy supposed to do? act like he's not white trash from alabama? what 'persona' do you want him to 'assume' deej?

i mean there's definitely a double standard here -- like, no one is grading (ahem) various black gangster rappers on the curve of 'redundant personas', so i'm not sure why yelawolf is getting this intense scrutiny & skepticism?

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, November 23, 2010 3:34 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

can't speak for anyone else but i'm not really concerned with the validity of the image or persona or anything -- i'm just saying even as a marketing tool it's kind of like jeez dude you've got skills, maybe don't work so hard to play up an angle Kid Rock and Bubba Sparxxx already did in a broader and more pop context

who knows what is truth & what is projection but i still can't help but see that as asking him to wash away his identity -- what would he rap about?

i don't mean that at all -- i'm just saying stuff like the Lynyrd Skynyrd verse trying to tie that into rap or the Bob Dylan hook, it's all kind of a cutesy clever heavyhanded way of him working the same "I have a foot in two different worlds!!!" thing that pretty much every white rapper has to grapple with on some level or another.

yeah theres something just stilted to me about the presentation, its not at all about authenticity or lack thereof -- bubba could be a corporate ceo for all i care if he was making songs like 'nowhere'

honestly i think some of what al & i are talking about is stuff that, if smoothed over, would make him a more popular artist!

except you're being pretty vague -- wearing trucker hats?

This what I have:
http://www.2dopeboyz.com/2010/01/01/yelawolf-trunk-muzik-mixtape/

I assumed it was the album proper, but apparently not?

do i need to like go dig up lyrics and interview quotes? we're obviously talking about more than just his look.

"Trunk Muzik" is the mixtape that was released for free in January, "Trunk Muzik 0-60" is the major label EP that was released commercially this week that features about half the same songs as the mixtape with some new stuff.

an EP with 12 tracks is not an EP! do they just want to sell it cheap/not give it the same weight as an album statement? or are the new tracks "bonus"?

major label hip hop has been really big on "EPs" that are actually album-length, it's been a big mystifying trend for the last year or so. it's basically just a weird way of them being able to release an album without calling it an album so that it doesn't have all the commercial expectations that an album would have.

the other day i saw an artist i know refer to his new release as an "EPixtape," which, just, barf

12 tracks is a little on the short side for a rap album!

didn't erykah badu insist on referring to worldwide underground as an EP?

whatevz to both of them, if it looks and sounds and is as long as an album...

i don't mean that at all -- i'm just saying stuff like the Lynyrd Skynyrd verse trying to tie that into rap or the Bob Dylan hook, it's all kind of a cutesy clever heavyhanded way of him working the same "I have a foot in two different worlds!!!" thing that pretty much every white rapper has to grapple with on some level or another.

Maybe I'm misreading you al, but surely the Lyndard Skynard verse is about how irrelevant LS is to people like him (not to mention rap). I guess you could argue that there's a performative contradiction there because by mentioning LS even to dismiss them still establishes you know who they are, but short of deciding it would be better for him never to reference such things, I can't see how he could go about grappling with this stuff in a less egregious manner.

i know the thrust of the verse isn't explicitly "rap is like Lynyrd Skynyrd", i'm just saying that kind of heavyhanded "i'm a white rapper from hickville, let me tell you a bit about that" isn't really what i go to his music to hear.

let an ep be an ep

free the ep

xxp but that's pretty much what he raps about...

unless he's rapping about eating pussy

not on every song

xpost i prefer the eating pussy songs

i mean, didn't bubba already do a really awesome album about that same exact subject matter better?

(i like yelawolf but i don't find him that fascinating as dude)

i don't understand how all of a sudden bubba sparxxx levels yelawolf's music irrelevant

we have room in our lives for hundreds of black rappers rapping about being poor black dudes but only room for one white rapper rapping about being a poor white dude

can't speak for anyone else but that wasn't at all what i was getting at

i was referring to m@tt's post

not that i really understand your POV either

it doesn't make him irrelevant, but i guess cuz there are so few i feel like that's gonna be the main gist of all the coverage...and a lot of it will act like bubba never happened

(again i LIKE yelawolf i think he makes good music and is good at rapping which i like)

xp i mean i understand it from the angle that it might hurt his ability to be successful, but artistically i don't

honestly i'm not hating at all, i just feel like i'm gonna have to read hella annoying non-rap outlet personality pieces about yelawolf basically

i feel like that's gonna be the main gist of all the coverage...and a lot of it will act like bubba never happened

well this isn't anything that yelawolf can control

well yeah probably xp

isn't it CRAZY, he'S WHITE and self defines as a REDNECK and but he LIKES RAP WHICH IS "BLACK" MUSIC what a paradox

i have room in my life for rappers whether they are black white green or purple

does yelawolf pass the delmar test?

yelawolf is a better and more entertaining rapper than bubba sparxxx

we have room in our lives for hundreds of black rappers rapping about being poor black dudes but only room for one white rapper rapping about being a poor white dude

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, November 23, 2010 5:30 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dude havent i been criticizing big krit for the exact same topical genericism that has been done before cf country shit basically being nappy roots as far as subject matter??

yelawolf is a better and more entertaining rapper than bubba sparxxx

― based lord sotosyn (The Reverend), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 6:26 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ban the rev

This thread is such a surreal archive. So many people fanning so hard for this vile rapper feigning like they had no understanding of how somebody could find him objectionable

EVERYBODY GET THE FUCK UP

xpost what was so "vile" about him in the early days?

seems like a weird word to use given, y'know, all the other rappers out there. has Yelawolf ever even had legal trouble? i can't recall any.

slumerican shitizen

^this is seriously never going to stop making me lol

― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, November 17, 2011 7:10 PM bookmarkflaglink

He was at the Welcome tp Rockville set doing a 30 minute set. I barely have thought of dude since the mediocre Radioactive. I saw him on that tour and he put on a good show. Performed song after song in rapid fire, engaged the fans. Performed shirtless in track pants like he was often pictured.

This time he comes out after 2 minutes of intro music in this expensive flashy blue coat and pants decked out in jewelry with his band strumming country music as he stream of consciousness rambled about meth and being from the South for minutes on end before he'd occasionally bother to do a song. He got in maybe 3 or 4 songs, stuff like "Catfish Billy", a freestyle or two, a newer single. Finally with a minute left he gets ready to do another song (probably "Pop the Trunk") only for his band to tell him "we're out of time dude") and he apologized and left.

Bizarre set lol

Also, someone at the fest in the Owners Circle (a very expensive VIP area) said he was there when Yela and his girlfriend pulled up and that Yela wouldn't stop talking about a "dookie stuck in his butt" and that he needed his girl to help him.

She showed back up with a bottle...of liquor, left and never returned

Seems like the 'White Southern Rappers blowing up as Country singers' train is leaving him behind

Probably the most jarring thing for me was seeing Jelly Roll do a near 100% hip hop set at this festival in 2021 and then return in his country form 3 years later.

I was a fan of him as a rapper. Not so much the latter