Yelawolf
Interview by Black Dog Bone
When did everything start happening for you? Was it with the record “Trunk Muzik”?
This was last year. “Trunk Muzik” is a year old now. This time last year we were in the studio recording “Trunk Muzik”, so it is about to be a year old. When I put “Pop the Trunk” with the video up on the internet, all of a sudden it’s in Australia, Japan, and South America.
You just put it out on the internet and it spread?
Yeah, I just put it on the internet. People will tell you. They liked the 
record and it spread on its own. Then Seneca, who is my publicist, was always out there making connections like he made for us to do this interview, and we started really going. The record just started taking off and we knew we had to go out and get a crew. It takes a crew to make this shit happen!
The word just got around with no initial push?
Yeah, and that is what I wanted out of my music. I wanted my music strong enough to where it will carry some weight on its own. The records need to work for themselves also. You can’t work shit that the people ain’t feeling because you will just be turning around in fuckin circles.
When I heard your music it was different from what I’ve been hearing In Rap. You’re from a small country town. Maybe that has a lot to do with it.
I am from a small town called Gadsden, Alabama. I am talking about the reality of being from a small town with the 9 to 5. It is a hustler’s town kind of like you saw in the movie “Hustle & Flow”. It is the Chevrolet culture. Everybody is working to survive and that is what I represent. It is like a paradox with big trucks and big tires and crazy country White boys playing Lil Boosie and shit that doesn’t make sense to people. For me it is making that which makes sense to people. I am passionate about what I do and I love what I do.
It’s a typical American country town?
Yes, it is a small country town. It is not as small as some towns because we got a mall, a Super Wal-Mart, and a Goodyear. It is bigger than some towns—we got a 5A high school which is pretty big.
When you were growing up what was it like? Were you growing up in a natural environment?
My Mom was 15 when she got pregnant. She was real Rock-N-Roll and single, so I went wherever she went and that meant 15 different schools. We went from the country like Antioch, Tennessee, and we went to Louisiana, but always coming back to Alabama all the time. I grew up the only child. She didn’t have another child until I was moving out, which was when I was 15. She got pregnant with my little sister Jasmine when I was 15. I grew up all over the place and I have seen a little bit of everything. I never grew up in a big city or lived in a big city until I got older and I did that on my own.
What are the bigger towns in your area?
There is Birmingham, Alabama, Huntsville, Aniston. The Talladega Nights race track is like 20 minutes form my house. If you know anything about NASCAR, it’s the biggest track in the world. It’s real thick with culture around where I am at.
It’s interesting that you say that, because a lot of people think that culture is only happening in big cities. I feel like in small towns is where the real culture is.
That’s for real! It is actually just the opposite of what people think. Most big cities lose their cultures because it’s too mixed. Small towns are so isolated that they have their own culture. It is happening right now in Atlanta. If you go downtown Atlanta you won’t even hear nobody with a country accent. You won’t see nobody in a truck. You have to go outside of Atlanta to get the real Georgia, like deep in East Point, or Bankhead to start seeing real country. In small towns people have been there for five or six generations and they carry a culture.
That’s the real grassroots culture. If you go to Africa or Asia every village will have different customs and dialects. In America I feel like that is getting lost.
We have been on tour right now for twenty something days on a 45 day tour, we are driving in a van so we are seeing a lot. It is really opening up our eyes. We get caught up in these cities, but right over these mountains there is something to see. There is still people holding on to their culture; it’s really out there, it’s just not abundant. Outside of every big city it is just like my home town of Gadsden. All small towns are the same—you got trailer parks, you got projects, you got apartments and then you got suburbs. You might also have somebody around with a big house but not normally.
Probably for you it was nice to see so much vast land and the mountains?
Yeah, it was an eye opener. I never really desired to see it, but I didn’t know what I was missing. Going through the Appalachian mountains, the big canyons, and going through the redwood forest. Seeing those trees for the first time reminded me that there is a lot out here in small country towns, and it made me even more excited about representing where I am from, because there is people out here and in these small towns around the redwood forest who can relate to the situation that we have as small town people. We embrace and live with the same problems that anyone from the city lives with, the same good and the same bad. There are people living and surviving and there are people going to jail and dying for the same bullshit that goes on in big cities. It’s just on a smaller scale.
You said your mom is a real Rock-N-Roll type of person. Does she play in a band?
When I say Rock-N-Roll I mean as it is defined, just balls to the wall. She grew up partying! Sex, drugs, and Rock-N-Roll! That’s my mom! She never played in a band but we were always around that environment, so I grew up listening to classic Rock, just seeing Harley Davidson crews, music crews, and people who were on tour with Aerosmith and shit like that.
So she was into that kind of Rock, not Punk Rock?
She wasn’t into Punk Rock, she was more into classic Rock. I wish she would have been into Punk Rock because that would have been kind of tight. I missed all of that! She never really exposed me to that.
Were you exposed to Punk Rock on your own?
I was later on through skateboarding. Punk Rock is the shit, man!
What were your influences? You were into classic Rock, Punk, and Rap?
Country music too!
Was it older Country music like Patsy Cline and Hank Williams?
Patsy Cline was always in the house. My mom loved Patsy Cline. Also we listened to Hank Williams, Conway Twitty and the real old shit like old Bluegrass too. We listened to George Strait, Charlie Daniels and a lot of that stuff. It was influential subconsciously, even before I realized I liked it. I never really hated any kind of music but it didn’t catch my attention like Rock-N-Roll did or like Rap did. The older I got I started appreciating Country music really more and more and it adds to my own creative mind just to be exposed to it.
On your myspace you’re talking about Ghetto Tech. Are you into Techno too?
Ghetto-Tech! I didn’t get into Techno too much but I felt the term Ghetto-Tech fit “Trunk Muzik” with the wild 808 rhythms and that technical slum shit. I just like the word actually. By definition I don’t know what Ghetto-Tech is, it just sounded like my shit.
With what you’re doing and your background, Ghetto Tech would be a good name for your music. How did you get into Rap? Was that from school?
I always thought that I would be professional at anything that I did. When I played T-Ball I used to stand in my outfit and picture myself in the World Series, and I really believed in my mind that I was going to be a World Series player. It wasn’t like make believe it was like obsessive and it was the same thing with football. I would start playing backyard football and I told my papa that I was going to be the best wide receiver ever lived. And I believed it. That same passion went into skateboarding and that same passion went into rapping as well. My passion made me better because it took years of practice to get the craft and to understand how to write and what I was writing about. It was like the million and one things that you need to know about being a good MC.
How old were you when you started really getting into Rap?
It was in ’06 when shit started to click, but it was really in 2000 when I started to pursue it. I started actually in Berkeley; I came out here to California with my homeboy John Newport who was already out here on some skate shit and I came out here to skate in Berkeley. I left Berkeley to pursue music and I put my life on it. It was in ’06 or ’07 when shit started to click creatively. What I mean is not being able to just rap, but to be able to talk about something that really meant something to me personally and to Alabama that the world could relate to. Something where you don’t have to be from where I grew to up understand it!
Were you a person who was making beats or a rapper?
I started making beats with an MPC-2000 and I got really good at it. I was the neighborhood producer; my boys would come over and record in Gadsden. For the most part they really didn’t respect when I was trying to rap.
Because you were a White kid?
That, and it was more because I wasn’t going hard. I would write a verse and I wasn’t really going hard. As time went on there was so many people walking through the door that I felt like I could just crush on some Rap shit. It gave me a drive to want to do it for real, because I saw how much whack shit was going on. I just wanted to put my two cents in it.
A lot of times it looks like the most washed out, middle of the road music is the biggest, while the more creative original music goes unheard.
People like what they like and it might be something that I don’t understand. My mom doesn’t like Bob Dylan. When he comes on she says to turn it off because she don’t like his voice, but I don’t get it because I love Bob Dylan. I am like, “What’s wrong with you, you don’t like Bob Dylan?” I always used that specific incident of me and my mom with Bob Dylan to measure everything, because somebody loves that shit. Live and let live. Fuck it! Somebody loves Rick Ross, Somebody loves Jay-Z, somebody loves Eminem, somebody loves Busta Rhymes and somebody out there hates all of them. As an artist I can’t get caught up in what is out there that I particularly don’t fuck with, because I understand how hard this fuckin shit is and once you gain fans you want to keep them for life. The bigger you get the more the divide becomes clear of who is fuckin with you and who is not fuckin with you. That is becoming more and more clear to me and that is helpful. I can sit here and say why I don’t know why Soulja Boy became what he became, but when he dropped nobody could really understand it. At this point now I am a fan and I grew to like it. He is a good example of someone who nobody understood and people thought it was garbage but it ended up being huge. He was just a kid and he was clever as fuck. I can’t really hate on anybody because you just change over time. Yeah, there is a lot of whack shit out there that is big, but that is just my personal opinion.
It’s OK that the washed out, recycled music is big, but there is so much interesting and innovative music that never gets recognized.
Sometimes you have to ride that line and you can’t be different to the point to where it is un-getable. I don’t want to live on the underground forever. I have been here for ten years already and I want to be successful in this career, and anyone who says they wouldn’t want to is lying. All the greats that we love had both underground and mainstream success. The Beatles had fuckin hundreds of hit records, but they are an amazing band and they changed the world musically and creatively and they were deep and challenged music. You can do both; you just got to ride that line!
There is some really great music that could be commercially successful and still be something fresh.
Radio changed. After the internet came radio started suffering and they played the shit that paid the bills. They use a lot of advertisement in between radio. MTV changed a lot because there are no more music videos and you have to go to MTV2 and Yo MTV Raps! is gone which killed it. You just have to find new ways to get out there. The good thing about the internet is they will tell you what is good or not and whether they fuck with it or not.
You’re part Native American. Does your Native American blood come from your father or mother’s side?
My dad is Cherokee and my mom has some Cherokee and some Blackfoot in her as well. Society would just call us White, but we got Native American blood. I was born in Cherokee county. The Goodyear where my Papa retired from has a golf course on it which is actually ancient Cherokee grounds. You ought to come out there, the Chief lets us do what we want. I told him who I was and he gave us keys to the golf course and he lets us go fishing and do whatever we want to do.
Do you listen to Native American music and bring that into what you’re doing?
I like it but I don’t know much about it. I was robbed of all of that knowledge and culture of Native America other than my mom who makes dream catchers and stuff like that for us. She makes crafts out of nature, and she took it upon herself to learn how to make dream catchers and weave them. I have been to a few Pow Wows myself.
I am thinking more about the drumbeats, like incorporating Native American drumbeats into your music.
Drumming is really the deep musical roots of everything. It all comes from the skin drum and revolves around that. I think that is why the 808 is so infectious, because there is something primal within us. It is something that is deep within us. Native Americans and Black culture in America created American music. Coming from Alabama and what I got out of Louisiana, I started creating Zydeco sounds.
You were very open to all different kinds of music?
Yeah man. I have been to concerts and I would just sit and watch them play cello. I have been to Triple Six Mafia concerts and got into a mosh pit as well as I have been to Hank Williams shows and choir shows. I have been to Punk shows. I am all about it. I can’t see myself being a good artist if I can’t open up to shit.
You have all these different influences, but how would you define the Yelawolf sound?
There is no way for one particular song or one album to define me and my life, because I feel my story is too long. I have been through too much to sum it up with an album or a song. What defines me is just taking pieces of my life and turning them into a song. As long as it is always my reality it will always be original, because I am the only person who has lived my life. That is the approach I take and musically it decides what I want the project to sound like. What “Trunk Muzik” is, is to pay homage to the Chevy and the big speaker trunk music so we put the 808s and kept the music real slump. Prior to that we did a mixtape called “Stereo” and we did it paying homage to classic Rock. “Trunk Muzik 0-60” which is my album on Interscope coming out November 23rd. It’s just stepping up “Trunk Muzik” and making it more grime. I’m fuckin psyched man because it’s gonna be everywhere.
Do you play any musical instruments?
I am learning guitar right now. I have always played around on instruments but I am not a musician yet because I have always focused on writing and becoming a better rapper and a singer. I want to evolve into playing live eventually.
As far as your style of writing, are you more of a storyteller or a metaphor kind of lyricist?
I am definitely a storyteller! I have been through too much and I can’t hold it in, I have to tell this story. It is just too much and I can’t hold it in. It’s like selfish because God put me through hell so I could help other people get through it themselves. I have been through good too, because I have been through days that were like paradise.
Do you feel like you were a kid who grew up fast, living with a young single mom?
Living with a single mom, she had to go to work and in 5th grade I had to cook my own dinner and wake myself up in the morning and fix my own breakfast and go to school.
When you were growing up it was just you and your mom?
Yeah! Someone tried to break into my house when my mom was gone and I had to find myself out of that situation. Also making friends I had difficulty, because by being raised around my mom I had an older mentality so I made friends that were older. All my friends were 16, 17, and 18 when I was only like 12 or 13, but they really liked me because I acted older. I grew up too fast.
When you look back do you remember beautiful days or sad days?
I had days that were great! Some of them were the classic neighborhood days of me just hanging out with my friends playing football or skateboarding. I spent so many days of my life skating. The drama mainly came from my mom’s boyfriends and drugs and just scary shit like people getting killed in the country or satanic shit going down behind my house.
You were scared?
Yes, just scared period! Real scary shit! The woods are very dark and when you have to get up in the morning and you are in the second grade and you have to walk down a long dirt driveway through the woods to catch that bus in the pitch black, you are scared. Shit like that matures you and it gives you a lot of heart. That is the kind of scary situations I was dealing with as a child. The older I got I started dealing with shit that was going on in the streets because of my friends and the people I had around me who were going to jail and getting shot.
When you grew up you probably noticed that it is more scary to walk alone in the city streets. The dark roads in the woods are the nicest roads.
Oh yeah. It’s way safer walking through the woods than it is down an alleyway. I don’t know if I would rather be shot or attacked by a coyote.
What kind of sounds you like for your music? Do you like heavy bass sounds with the 808 or more up tempo beats?
It just depends. When I am not thinking too much it is good to go like that. “Pop the Trunk” is dark and it is about storytelling. I got a bunch of different moods because naturally I am human and I laugh and have a good time with my homies, but I have bad times and angry times too. To me it is about capturing a lot of that and not just one sided. It just depends.
When you represent yourself do you represent a certain image, or do you just represent a regular person?
Image-wise I do. My friends will tell you I have been that dude who will come up with some other shit on. I have always been that dude. Skateboarders traditionally wear skate shoes, but I would roll up on the spot in Timbalands and skate. I have always done what the fuck I wanted to do. When I was really young I would put shorts over my jeans and socks over the top of my jeans and my mom would be like, “What are you doing?” The way that I dress now I do what I want to do period. My management, as far as the way that I wear my clothes, they threw their fuckin hands up.
Does your label try to tell you what to wear?
They used to tell me, but they don’t even try anymore because it’s a lost cause.
How did the deal with Interscope happen?
The Interscope deal has been about eight months now. They saw me perform. It was a chain of events, but that is what sealed the deal and we flew straight to LA.
What was the big break for you?
It was “Pop the Trunk.” It was the song at first and then it was the video. When they heard “Pop the Trunk” and the saw the video people were like, “I will fuck with this dude.”
I feel like you could cross over to the Indie crowd and the club crowd as well as the Rap crowd. You’ll probably end up being a movie star too.
I hope so because I like all kinds of different shit. I think they will like my stuff because it comes through the music. When you hear my music there is influences that they could fuck with like Outkast and NWA. Who don’t like Outkast?
What about people who are into Tech N9ne and ICP?
I hope so, man! I would like that crowd to listen to my shit.
