With yesterday marking the release of Yelawolf’s second album as a Shady Records artists, the Alabama-born rapper chopped it up with HotNewHipHop about his prohibitive recording process for Love Story, what exactly Slumerican means, and his plans for an unconventional short tour this September.
Speaking about his switch in aesthetic as seen on Love Story, Yelawolf said he’s been hinting at the shift for years.
“I’ve alluded to this style for a long time,” he said, “whether it had been making a reference to it in a verse or at the B.E.T. Awards with Big Boi wearing a Hank Williams shirt. I’ve kind of planted seeds about where I was going or headed. Right before Trunk Muzik I had a full band. I was doing this project called Arena Rap. But it wasn’t clicking. It was a little ahead of its time. So we just went and we did Trunk Muzik and it got me all the way to Shady Records. This album was important to say, ‘Alright, we’re gonna close the door. This is artist only. No one is even allowed to have an opinion other than myself.’ When I decide I like it or not then I allow someone else to have an opinion about it that I was working with. It took five months to get that first song. Forty ideas before I had a song that I felt like was of the calibre. After that the album started flowing better. I’m really proud of it.”
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Shooting down the prospect of him starting a Slumerican label, Yelawolf instead described the term as a loose identifier for fans of all walks of life.
“Slumerican is not a label,” he said. “It was never intended to be a label. It’s really just an idea. There’s tattoo artists and professional beer drinkers, it is what you make of it. It is what you make of it. It doesn’t really apply to a certain profession, music. Slumerican is just Slumerican. If I ever did do a ‘label’ I definitely wouldn’t call it a label. That’s just not our style, it’s not my style. It’d be more like a house for artists to come do what they do. That would be pretty much how I would see it happening. Slumerican, you know, there’s more Slumerican tattoos out there than we have sold shirts. So it’s a real connection with people. They get it.”
As for his plans of promoting the album, Yelawolf announced a short tour that will forego a tour bus for a group of Harley Davidson motorcycles.
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“I got this really cool tour coming up in September where we’re gonna be doing the whole tour strictly on Harley’s,” he said. “So no bus. Nothing. We’ll be starting in Nashville and then we’ll go to Chattanooga, stay the night. Next day bike out to Birmingham. And then Montgomery. And then Atlanta. And then ending in Nashville for the first of Slumerican Festival.”
For additional Yelawolf coverage, watch the following DX Daily:
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