Yelawolf: Trunk Muzik/ TM 0-60 / Radioactive

keep it real deej, we can't be listening to anyone who is not "themselves" after all can we

I suspect rtc wouldn't be into yelawolf if it's any consolation...

― Tim F, Tuesday, November 23, 2010 12:33 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha this actually makes me feel more alone tbh

upon reflection

"in a kanye world, how is yelawolf ambitious??"

i think the second song on this, in which yela sweet-talks a cali girl so he can get to her dad's awesome car, will always endear him to me

"in a kanye world, how is yelawolf ambitious??"

― in a merzbow world, how is kanye ambitious?? (ilxor), Tuesday, 23 November 2010 18:57 (19 minutes ago) Permalink

zings need work son.

haha this actually makes me feel more alone tbh

ha ha yeah that occurred to me too.

Not surprisingly the google image search for "contraristan" throws up some very ilx images.

im in a weird place w/ this dude, because i dont really like him that much, but i cant really articulate why yet, & so far anything i say wd sound mad contrarian & a bit ridiculous, especially considering how basically everyone around here is into his stuff -- i mean, tim f, noz, lex, j0rdan, rev, all u need is an rtc cosign & im alone :O

― challop and a muff (deej), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 1:29 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

theres some covert falseness i cant identify. something that sounds forced or ... idk. put on. i can work it out

― challop and a muff (deej), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 1:30 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i mean i like the mixtape a lot and am checking for dude, but i can't say i'm totally sold, it's more just something i enjoy than i'm really arguing for his greatness or promise or anything. i just like doubletime raps and think the production is dope, all the neo-Kid Rock "check out how mindblowing my white trash rap culture clash is!" schtick is whatever.

yeah tbh that stuff is almost too distracting for me somehow. like i cant help but feel like ppl are latching onto that as a big part of his worth & if anything i think his rapping style doesnt sound v. country at all

sd otm

which is why i was kinda bummed with these new joints b/c the production was subpar imo

i guess its like, his 'persona' visually feels put-on & try-hard, like, his personality as a rapper is strong but doesnt really reflect his style or something. when i try to envision what dude looks like i dont even remember his face, just a trucker hat, some tats & country props (cheap beer or camo pants??)

his hair hides his face half the time

something to hide

his schtick reminds me a little of the drive-by truckers, that kind of revisionist white southern life thing that just ends up feeling fake cause he/they rides it so hard. hes a good rapper tho.

yeah i mean bubba sparxx was a much better bubba sparxx idg why he needed that persona -- even from a marketing standpoint it feels redundent

― challop and a muff (deej), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 3:29 PM (0 seconds ago) Bookmark

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?

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

Honestly he should just go all out for the Jesse Pinkman thing with added country and rock elements seeping in at the edges. It's impossible for me to believe that a record label wouldn't be able to market an artist like that in 2014.

oh yeah total flop

I am on my way to accompany my friend to a Yelawolf concert! I have never rly listened to Yelawolf nor have I ever been to a rap show. I am kind of excited.

actually that's not true I saw Ghostface at my college nvm

holy shit this is amazing

i loved Trunk Muzik and spun Radioactive approximately .5 times. which i'm sure is not unique.

Same. Radioactive struck me as total bare-faced commercial whoring.

he will never reach Trunk Muzik heights again, but Love Story seems ok to me. am i the only one?

yeah, i like it. it could stand to be, like, half as long, but it's good.

truthbomb. 18 tracks or w/e? i never understood why rap albums tend to go to 15, 18, 20 tracks. give us yr 10 best and get out.

god he is so bad now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaRRwOz4uEo

yr arms are to short to box with bubba sparxxx

this has been watched 2 million times in 5 days!

Giorgi Merabishvili1 day ago
This is new genre: Country Hip Hop! RESPECT!
82 likes

guess that guy never saw the opening credits for Justified

hah

obviously he's gotten worse, this new shit is sub-Everlast, but he was always pretty gross imo

Anybody still willing to ride for this guy?

Nope

did he do something ?

no, he just tanked real fast after his mixtapes.

oh yeah, thought maybe something beyond that. i liked the 'Til Its Gone' but thats the only thing ive even heard since radioactive and thats cos it was used on a tv show i was watching.

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