Yelawolf

Alabama rapper Yelawolf is a true American original: Sprouting from the unlikely soil of Gadsden, Ala., he’s equal parts motor-mouthed Southern rapper, ornately inked-up skate rat, rock-radio enthusiast, country-fried documentarian, splatter-flick storyteller and swoon-worthy heart throb with RED boldly tattooed on his neck. And, after signing to Eminem’s Shady Records earlier this year, he’ll add “incredibly famous person” to that list soon enough.

His Southern Gothic yarns are the most evocative images hip-hop has ever had of the rural South, effortlessly capturing the beer cans that line dirt roads, the rocks you pick from your cargo shorts, the eerie fog of a backyard meth lab, the Mossberg shotguns that gather rust in a duffel bag, a first date at a Waffle House, and the occasional truck with a Confederate flag bumper sticker while Beanie Sigel bumps through the open window. As quick to give props to Lynyrd Skynyrd as UGK, his production—usually courtesy of longtime collaborator Will Power—is a sublimely raucous blend of trunk-wrecking Southern crawl and buzzsaw-metal fury.

His evolution into this post-modern mash-up was slow-burn. He was a Beasties-obsessed ankle-biter who could catch a catfish with his bare hands; he was a teenage dropout on the verge of becoming a professional skateboarder; he even got eliminated from Missy Elliott’s UPN reality show The Road To Stardom. A restless spirit fueled by the lightning quick rhymes of OutKast and the churn of Southern rock, he ended up on Columbia Records in 2007, only to be quickly and unceremoniously dropped. He started building a second chance with the 2008 mixtape Stereo, which mixed his liquid sing-song with samples snatched from the classic AOR that birthed him—furiously rapping over some vivisected Heart riffs, head-knocking Eagles slices, and a Rubin-ready AC/DC banger.

His breakthrough came when he teamed with Atlanta tastemaker DJ Burn One for the no-nonsense Trunk Muzik mixtape at the start of 2010. A 12-track behemoth of slow-rolling pick-up lines, aggro flip-offs and noir tales of ’Bama slaughterhouses, it’s been downloaded via DatPiff over 50,000 times. Its highlights were remastered into vision-blurring bass implosions for his essential, 48-minute Interscope appetizer, Trunk Muzik 0-60.

By 2011, his momentum is unstoppable. He’s appeared on two XXL covers before the first hot day of summer. He’s collaborated with Raekwon, Bun B, Gucci Mane, Big Boi, Paul Wall, The Game, Travis Barker and, of course, Eminem, who’s diligently working on Yela’s official Shady/ Interscope debut Radioactive. His performance at Hopscotch might literally be the last time you can say “I saw him when.” —Christopher Weingarten