Yelawolf

“This is my paradox,” Yelawolf tells me on a warm afternoon in late April.  It’s been a month since he was the talk of Austin, Texas tearing down stages at an alarming rate, while remaining humble and hungry, passing out copies of his acclaimed Trunk Muzik mixtape after shows and throughout Texas streets.  It’s been a few weeks since word broke that he was signing to Interscope and Jimmy Iovine, who has quite a track record with new talent and out of the box emcees.  Yelawolf is certainly that.  Beyond being a white rapper, Yelawolf is also a product of Alabama, and Tennesse, moving around with this mother as a child.  Skateboarding was his passion, and each city brought a different skate community, which would become his crew.  His crew also included guys that owned pickup trucks adorned with confederate flags and Hip Hop music blasting from their speakers, a somewhat confusing site.

“This is what I deal with,” he continues about the dichotomy of hanging with “rednecks listening to Beanie Sigel.”  For a while Yelawolf struggled with what to put in his music, and if he could really rap about everything going on in his life.  “I just realized, ‘f**k it.’  G-d put it in my path to talk about it, and to use it.”

Use it he did.  His knowledge and taste for classic rock propelled him into multiple opportunities supplying interpolation of rock standards for new Hip Hop songs and Hip Hop artists.  It also opened him up a large fanbase of kids that could relate to Yelawolf, his background, as well as his ability to touch on multiple cultures.  The paradox turned out to be a strength, as well as something that is slowly captivating everyone who hears the music.  

We caught up with Yelawolf to ask him what’s changed over the last year, what he can and can’t talk about, Bob Dylan as a rapper, and much much more.  Check out our full exclusive interview below.

RubyHornet:  Good to talk to you man.  It appears that your time is quickly becoming more and more valuable, how do see your situation as compared to Yelawolf at this time last year?

Yelawolf:   I’m definitely just growing as a person.  I’ve grown so much.  I’ve grown as an artist and as an emcee.  I’m stepping into the booth with a different energy.  I’m going to the stage with a brand new, and different energy.  The attention that I’ve been getting online lately based off of Trunk Muzik, off the Juelz Santana, Raekwon,  and Bun B features, off the “Pop The Trunk” video, has been something absolutely new to me.  I was afraid of online for so many years.  I never f**ked with it at all.  Up until this moment, I don’t.  I have gained a team who all have been working this s**t online and we’ve gained so much attention.  I don’t know, I don’t really have any words.  I’m so excited, humbled and validated at the same time.

RubyHornet: When you signed to Columbia in ’07 it was before the real heavy rise of the major blogs and just the whole Internet leading the way of breaking artists.  From my perspective, this seems like a great time to be introducing yourself so to speak to a mass audience, some that might not even know you from your Columbia days.  It seems like you realize this is a special time for you, and how does that influence the way you carry yourself, attack the stage, conduct these interviews?

Yelawolf:   The stage presence comes from rocking with a band.  That s**t really took me to another level.  Last year I did the Arena Rap EP and I put a band together to perform that.  It just really took my performance to the next level and I carried that over into just rocking with a DJ.  It helped out tremendously, and obviously I’m passionate about my music, period.  When that s**t comes on the speakers, I’m real passionate about what I say and it really translates live.  I enjoy the fans, I enjoy the energy from the people. No matter what it is I’ll work with it.  As far as how online has changed where I’m at, when online went mobile and actually popped on your phone, that changed everything for me.  I don’t f**k with computers, I don’t go online for the same reasons that someone in Hollywood isn’t going to read the tabloids or pick up magazines.  I don’t f**k with online, I don’t f**k with blogs and all that.  I love them all, for real.  I give them all my blessings for helping me, but I just don’t get on there because if I scroll down and see some bulls**t, it will stick with me.  I avoid reading people’s comments.  I do however go on Twitter on my Blackberry and that s**t has really changed a lot for me, just being able to immediately give people my thoughts on a situation, or take photos of where I’m at.  Especially in Alabama to be able to show people the places and things that inspire me, and people can see them right there.  This ain’t no bulls**t.  This is where I’m pulling from.  This pickup truck on no tires, this old man holding his pistol.  It’s really fun for me.  It feels good to validate my music through Twitter.  A lot of people don’t use it like that, but I do.  I take photos and shoot them right up online like, ‘yo, I told you.’

RubyHornet:  When you say that it allows you to validate your music it makes me think of something you say on the Trunk Muzik mixtape, “You didn’t see me coming, but I’m coming anyway.”  When I first started hearing about you the word was, ‘you gotta check this guy out, he’s from Alabama, he’s totally different and just the imagery was like, ‘oh s**t I have to listen to this dude’s music cause I haven’t heard of someone coming out like him before.’  I don’t know a lot about Alabama.  Living in Chicago we’re given a certain idea of what the south and Alabama are like.  I’m wondering if you see certain pluses and minuses of being a hip hop artist from Alabama, in a sense that people don’t know what to expect but then there’s also no history or blueprint so to speak.

Yelawolf:  There’s definitely an open slate to create my own picture.  There’s a sense of being careful of how I describe where I’m from, and being very literal and very specific, very to the point so that any references to where I’m from and where I’m talking about the listener can go look at.  You can go see it.  I’m very careful as to what I talk about and how I talk about it.  The spin is, it’s my life.  It’s my perspective.  Even though I share the culture of Alabama, it’s still from my eyes, it’s still my own story.  That’s where it’s completely relatable culturally, and what gives it something that’s individual is the perspective that I give it.  It’s Yelawolf.  It’s how I’m seeing it.  It’s a marriage of culture and creativity. 

RubyHornet:   I read that you found Hip Hop while living in Tennessee and that you got introduced to the music when your mom’s boyfriend brought home a Run DMC shirt and some Beastie Boys music.  When you first heard Hip Hop, and heard emcees talk about NYC or LA maybe Chicago at that time, where was your mind going and how did you imagine those places being perhaps a world away in TN, or Alabama?  Was it almost a magical place, and then you realize oh, I can go to those places?

Yelawolf:  When I first got introduced to the music one record in particular, “Paul Revere”, was stuck in my head all the time.  I had never heard the 808’s before, ever.  On top of that, it wasn’t given to me like, ‘this is some Hip Hop right here.’  It was just handed to me.  It was just put in my hand.  So to me, it was still rock, but I knew I had never heard that sound before.  Musically, I definitely wasn’t old enough to really soak in the lyrics until later in life.  Looking back on “Paul Revere”, it’s really a fairy tale, the song is.  The Beastie’s weren’t ever really that literal.  When I really started getting into the literal content of artists, it was NWA, MJG and 8Ball, they were real literal.  When I moved out to Nashville, I started to see the images of the streets and what they were talking about as stories from the streets, like the news or television.  L.A. and New York and all that was super intimidating to me.  I remember being like, ‘wow, that’s scary,’ but not knowing that the country was scary to them.  It was just growing up and learning that it’s the not knowing that shakes us all up until we go there and it’s like, ‘oh, this is like my neighborhood. I deal with the same s**t.’  It definitely was intimidating for many, many years man, and until we had prominent groups coming out.  Outkast really opened up everybody’s eyes from every coast about what was going on down here.  It took a minute for the South to get up on it’s feet to be like, ‘yeah, we’re here.’  For a while I think we all felt a certain sense of responsibility.  We all wanted that.  We all wanted to be standing up to the East Coast, like ‘this is what goes on here and we’re proud of it.’

Yelawolf

RubyHornet:  You said, “I spent many years trying to figure out what and how I can say, or how I can convey this culture that I live and still be listenable and cool with people because it wasn’t easy to figure out how to talk about all this redneck and hood s**t in one record you know.”  Many people may never see those two crossing, but to me it kind of speaks to how we’re trained to see differences just by race  and ethnicity in this country, but it’s moreso class (which is greatly tied into race) that seems to be the biggest common separator.  What are your thoughts as someone touching a lot of cultures in a way that not many people get to do?

Yelawolf:  It is definitely class.  It’s how much money you got in your pocket, how much money your family has and what side of town you were born and raised in.  Who you were raised around, all that plays into where you stand in society.  I just remember damn near waking up one day with what I was seeing and thinking, ‘oh my g-d, I can really rap about this s**t.”  For so many years I was kind of avoiding it based on I didn’t know if I was bold enough.  I didn’t know if I was really down to do it, cause once I said it, it was a wrap.  It had to be there 100%.  But I knew enough about it, and my family is that, first hand.  Two hours ago I was in a tow truck with two of the reddest rednecks you’ll ever meet on the way to pick up my chevy from a junkyard and one of them was drinking a two liter Dr. Pepper out of a bottle with yellow teeth.  And we ended up talking about some rap s**t.  This is my paradox.  This is what I deal with.  I just realized, ‘f**k it.’  G-d put it in my path to talk about it, and to use it.’  I use very literal situations and I might rap about that situation.  I use those very literal situations to open people up and entertain people with cool ass s**t to think about.

RubyHornet:  Sometimes when I listen to your music, which is very storytelling, it reminds a little bit of folk music.  It’s interesting that “Mixin’ Up The Medicine” starts w/”I’m on the pavement thinking about the government” which is from Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”.  I’ve always thought that if Bob Dylan was born in the 70’s or 80’s he’d be a Hip Hop artist and just carries some of that aesthetic.  I’m wondering if you agree, and what is your connection to Dylan.

Yelawolf:  The “Subterranean Homesick Blues” Record I grew up listening to.  It’s just one of those pop culture records.  My mom was 15 when she was pregnant, 16 when she had me.  I grew up around young people listening to classic rock, so that was just something that was always there.  There’s a nostalgia for me listening to classic rock music and I drew a lot of melody from there.  I came out with Stereo, which was a mixtape I did that was a Hip Hop tribute to classic rock that I did with DJ Ideal.  After we did that I hooked up with Jim Jonsin, who’s pretty much cut from the same cloth.  He’s a straight classic rock dude that found Hip Hop.  He’s from a trailer park in Florida, the same kind of road travelled.  We started doing these remakes.  The first one we did was a Lynrd Skynrd cover at Columbia.  We redid “Simple Man” and then we did Flock of Seagulls, “Don’t Run”, which was the single for Slim Thug.  And then on came “Mixin’ Up The Medicine” cause I was building up a reputation in the producer world of being able to do these interpolations.  When Juelz heard the record he loved it and it became his single.  It’s just good timing, man… Concerning classic rock, I’m just a lifelong fan and I derive a lot of inspiration from that world.  I’m always in tune to old classic rock stations, I just enjoy it.  Would these artists be Hip Hop artists?  Absolutely.  For sure.  There’s no question, man.  They come from the same place.  Rock is Black music.  That’s what they’re doing, that’s what we’re doing.  American music at it’s root is Black music.  Native American, African rhythms evolved into Blues, into rock, into Hip Hop. 

RubyHornet:  On “I Wish” you say, “I Wish A motherf**ker tell me that I ain’t Hip Hop.”  I could ask 10 artists what Hip Hop means or what it means to be Hip Hop and get 10 different answers.  My question to you is, does being Hip Hop mean being just that?  Do we ever get caught up with “being Hip Hop” and perhaps shut ourselves off from other genres of music, other ways of thinking etc?

Yelawolf:  Yeah man, Hip Hop is so thick with irony.  It f**ks me up when people say that.  Listen man, Hip Hop is a mixture of everything on the planet.  How can you take a Sitar and make a Hip Hop record, take a slide guitar from Nashville and make it Hip Hop, a Cuban drum pattern, Hip Hop.  You can make anything Hip Hop, any kind of music.  So, we should be the last people from any genre to be putting ourselves in a box.  We’re using everybody else’s music to make our sound.  We pull from every sound.  Hip Hop is a world music.  There’s kids in Asia right now sitting in a basement with an MPC player coming up with beats.  Let it live.  It’s bigger than us.  We need to stop that s**t.  It’s bigger than us and it will outlive us all, we just need to let it grow.

RubyHornet:  Speaking of growing, I know the story of you copying one of you first raps in the principle’s office, and that there was a lot of profanity because you were emulating your favorite rappers.  What value comes from emulating others that you respect?  It seems like it’s almost a necessary to finding your own voice, would you agree?

Yelawolf:   Yeah, fully.  Emmulation is just human nature.  It’s like a baby.  A baby is learning to eat and walk by watching you and then they’re gonna grow up and run even better and faster than you.  That’s just how it is.  You emmulate to learn, man.  That’s what we do.  It’s by no means are you trying to act out what they’re saying or be them.  You’re just trying on that outift. How does this fit?  Oh, I need to do this, I need to do that, alright, now it fits me.  Now it’s mine.  Now I’m making my own outfits.  Now you’re wearing my outfits.  It’s just like evolution.  Somebody out there is rapping my s**t guaranteed, there’s a kid trying to stick with the Yelawolf right now.  And then he’s gonna grow up and when he’s 20 years old he’ll battle me out the box… I doubt it, haha.. That’s just who we are and everybody does that in everything, sports, carpenters, whatever.  You have to emmulate to learn.

RubyHornet:  You lived and traveled throughout the south as a kid before moving to Alabama.  I’ve lived in Chicago my whole life except for when I went away to school, so I have no idea what it’s like to move around.  I used to be a teacher and had students that bounced around a lot and it appeared to be very tough on them.  It seems like moving around would be tough on any kid and as a kid it may not make any sense and cause a lot of anger. As someone who lived that experience, how do you view your childhood now in retrospect compared to when you were living it, is it safe to say that without that you wouldn’t be speaking to me today?

Yelawolf:  We have a certain destiny or path that we don’t really understand until later in life.  Things happen to us when we’re little and we try to make sense of it at the time and it may frustrate you, you don’t understand why it’s going on.  If you’re focused and got people around, someone around you, everybody needs someone around to love cause that s**t really helps you get through.  Skateboarding was that for me.  No matter where I went, no matter how new I was I had a skatboard and I was a homie immediately.  I was a skateboarder that’s what I did.  That was like my blanket.  Anywhere I went I had friends, I wouldn’t even worry about it.  I was just like cool, new skaters.  I was always an outkast at school. Never cool, never into the jock crowd.  Never had the cool cheerleading girlfriend, but I always had homies.  That was just it for me man, it took care of me.  I think about that a lot, where I would be if I wasn’t relocated to Alabama, or what would I be?  I definitely would never have been an artist.  I wouldn’t have anything to talk about. 

RubyHornet:  Before you go, tell our readers what you have going on now.  You killed in Austin.  I DJ’ed for Rhymfest one of his shows and you went on a little bit before him and I saw you kill the crowd.  Throughout the week we were at this mansion recording and every artist that was coming through was like, ‘damn, I saw Yelawolf’s show and it was crazy.’  From Naledge to Bun B, you were the talk of Austin.  I’m wondering what’s come up since then and what’s in your near horizon?

Yelawolf:  I just want to say thanks to all my homies that were supporting me and came out to Austin.  If you said one thing about me, thank you.  If you made one compliment, thanks cause it made a big difference.  Everybody who made a gesture of mentioning my name, it really went a long way so I need to thank everybody for that.  What I have next… We’re going to be releasing Trunk Muzik 0-60.  Basically, it’s a re-release for all the people that don’t have it yet.  There’s still millions of people across this country and the world that don’t have it yet.  What we’ve done is teamed up with Interscope to release Trunk Muzik 0-60 and it’s coming out in early June.  It will have all fan favorites off of Trunk Muzik remixed and brought a new life.  We’re also going to add 3-5 new tracks with new features and that’ll be coming out next.  That’ll be it until the album comes out shortly after that.

Yelawolf