I bought Yelawolf’s debut album Radioactive, a couple of days ago. I’ve given it a couple of listens and there are some winners, but it mostly makes me want to listen to Trunk Muzik.
There is nothing wrong with Yela’s flow, but his beat selection is too entwined with pop for my tastes. Radioactive suffers from the Wiz Khalifa major label input syndrome. The label can sell a couple hundred thousand if the rapper can just be convinced to make a pop hit. In this case, the production and love that oozed out of Yela’s tapes dries up — in it’s place we get a sterile couple of pop-branded flops.
I do like a couple of the tracks. I’m in love with the melody of “Let’s Roll,” a string-heavy knocker of a smooth tune. “Animal” also gets me, despite the supple snares and synth overload, this tune contains the most head-nodding potential for the whole album. “Slumerican citizen” with worth consideration simply because it has Killa Mike on the chorus (although the conflation of class with race is way too simplified for my politics).
Oh well, I suspect that Yela will make a couple more albums. I’m not throwing in the towel on dude, but I wish for more. In the mean time, here is the old Yelawolf (of like 14 months ago) with Bun B from Trunk Muzik. Go get the mixtape if you don’t have it.
Life of refinement 