Yelawolf Albums Download
Rosicler Kleckner
The discography of American rapper Yelawolf consists of seven studio albums, five collaborative albums, six mixtapes, nine EPs, 50 singles (including sixteen as a featured artist) and 82 music videos. His music has been released on record labels Interscope Records, Shady Records and DGC Records, including independent record label Ghet-O-Vision and Slumerican which has released some of his independent material.
We're ranking the best Yelawolf albums of all time. One of the best rappers with a good voice, Yelawolf's discography features several popular songs, like "Daddy's Lambo" and "Best Friend." What is the greatest Yelawolf album ever?
There's a curious moment at the end of the sixth track on Yelawolf's major-label debut. It's "Throw It Up", one of the album's highlights. After the song ends, there's a skit where Yelawolf and his boss, Eminem, discuss the course of the album. Eminem tells Yelawolf that the album needs songs for women, love songs specifically. Yela, for his part, feigns protest. It's presented as a conversation that any label head might have with an artist, but including it on the album is a bizarre and remarkably cynical move. It's unclear whether it's presented as a warning, an apology, a cop-out, or all three, but it more importantly marks exactly where a potentially great album starts to go off the rails.
The idea of "crossing over" is something almost every rapper at a major label has to deal with. Making songs about, and for, women-- be it about love or dancing-- to gain popularity is a move about as old as the genre itself. For some rappers, it's a seamless transition. For others, it's not. It can be frustrating and dispiriting to watch the formula applied to a career that has yet to take shape, though it's a process everyone more or less knows is coming. It's also a route that can be rejected (a recent obvious example being Odd Future) or navigated deftly ("No Hands" didn't lose Waka Flocka any cred). Or, I guess, one can take the path Yelawolf chose, to lamely act as if you're a prisoner of a system that you chose to enter and make half-assed songs as if sentenced by law.
And with that rehearsed conversation with Eminem about making love songs for women, Yelawolf is trying to absolve himself from the responsibility of about one-third of Radioactive being decidedly half-assed. The middle of the album (featuring hooks from the likes of Priscilla Renea and Fefe Dobson) is far and away the worst music of Yelawolf's career, and he knows it. His rapping is passable, but the beats are leaden and uninspired and the hooks are about as canned as possible. It's hard to imagine what the market for those songs is, really-- I can't imagine that Yelawolf's female fans want to hear him rap about conventional romance, or want to hear a potentially good song about blue-collar American life drowned in a syrupy chorus.
The worst part isn't the songs themselves, but that the album didn't have to go this route. Outside the sagging middle section, the subject matter and production will be nothing new to those familiar with Yela's music; his voice and perspective remain sharp and unique, and he certainly hasn't lost any of his technical skill. The guests (Mystikal, Killer Mike, Three 6 Mafia secret weapon Gangsta Boo) are also otherwise the type of people that should be on a Yelawolf album, rappers from whom he pulls his vocal style or sharp wit, or to whom his fans likely also listen. (There is a frame of a great album here, and in the age of selective iTunes playlisting, maybe the regrettable portion of the album is merely just forgettable.) This isn't Yelawolf's first foray into trying to make pop songs or songs for women, but it's by far his worst. His previous albums-- last year's Trunk Muzik and its repackaged follow-up Trunk Muizk: 0-60-- showcased an ability and an affinity for pop songwriting that could've been fostered and encouraged here instead of being shelved for industry cast-offs.
And then there is "Let's Roll", the song with Kid Rock that unexpectedly shows exactly how the formula can go right. Whether it equals pop success remains to be seen, but it's a collaboration that plays to both artists' strengths. As country boys at heart with an interest in both rap and rock, Yela and Kid Rock are arguably closer kindred spirits than Yela and Eminem, despite the tongue-twisting rapping. "Let's Roll" asks Rock to sing a conventional rap hook over a conventional rap beat, but the crux is in the grittiness and twang that Rock brings to the track, which dovetails perfectly with Yela's imagery of life as a rebel in Alabama. It's an inspired pairing, one that amounts to one of the best songs of Yelawolf's career, and it holds a mirror up to the four or five insipid crossover attempts that come later.
By signing up you agree to our User Agreement (including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions), our Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement and to receive marketing and account-related emails from Pitchfork. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Yelawolf has released War Story, his double album which features Killer Mike, Jelly Roll, Caskey and Struggle Jennings. In a recent exclusive with Rock The Bells, Yelawolf discussed the new project. "Initially I set out to do two albums, so I went to Los Angeles and created an album which became the 'Michael Wayne' side, he explained.
"When I came back to Nashville, I played the record for WLPWR, and I felt that we needed to create a new album because there were two different vibes, and I didnt have the time to release two different projects."
"I felt like the project is the answer to Love Story," he says of the album's name. "It's the same two producers, and for everything we've been through in music and life, the major label system, and the Hip-Hop culture, and shows across the world it has really been somewhat of a war. The album is a celebration about that war, not so much the struggle of it, but becoming the artist that I am now."
COMPLEX participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means COMPLEX gets paid commissions on purchases made through our links to retailer sites. Our editorial content is not influenced by any commissions we receive.
This week, Yelawolf dropped his debut album Radioactive. His album mixes and matches hip-hop with a variety of styles of music including rock, dubstep, and even country. In our continuing coverage of Yelawolf Week here at Complex, we got on the horn with Catfish Billy to talk about his favorite albums and found out his musical tastes are just as diverse as his debut album.
Although he declined to rank the albums, he went on to tell us about the album that terrified him as a kid, what Lynyrd Skynyrd song he molds himself after, and which album reminds him of the days he used to sniff brown paper bags full of airplane glue.
Yelawolf: I wanted to be Axl Rose. I got a pair of skin-tight pants. I got a fucking ten-gallon hat like Slash. I had a pair of Airwalk 540 high-tops. I had a fucking tie-dye tank top. I wanted to be Axl Rose. I had a fucking spike belt!
To come up from Alabama, and living in Tennessee and Georgia at the time... You have to kind of understand how that would look. I was getting bussed from the suburbs and the apartment homes in Antioch, Tennessee downtown to the projects.
Deviating from the country/hip hop style of his previous two albums, Yelawolf returns to his southern rap roots on Trunk Muzik 3. Spitting bars about thrift shops and whiskey over gritty, 808-heavy beats, Yelawolf delivers an emphatic final release under the Shady Records label.
Feature Editor Mitch Findlay is a writer and hip-hop journalist based in Montreal. Resident old head by default. Enjoys writing Original Content about music, albums, lyrics, and rap history. His favorite memories include interviewing J.I.D and EarthGang at the "Revenge Of The Dreamers 3" studio sessions in Atlanta and receiving a phone call from Dr. Dre. In his spare time he makes horror movies.
c80f0f1006