Interviews | Amalgam Digital Blog

Alabama Slammer Artist: YelaWolf Interviewer: ENIG MUE

Alabama Slammer

YelaWolf Interview with ENIG MUE 01-18-10

AmalgamDigital.com: How you doing today?

YelaWolf: Chilling man, I’m back in ‘Bama, taking it slow after that crazy trip to NY.

AmalgamDigital.com: You just came off a show there?

YelaWolf: Oh we did Shade 45, ThisIs50.com, Green Lantern, Kay Slay, AOL Boombox, a bunch of shit.

AmalgamDigital.com: Good Shit, so growing up in Alabama how was the diversity, where there any other cultures down there?

YelaWolf: Naw, not for real, it was just black and white people really, in Alabama at least. Mexicans are starting to set up shop in Gadsden, other than that, that’s it. No Puerto Ricans, no Jamaicans, no real Asian culture, just blacks and whites.

AmalgamDigital.com: Was there any redlining around the neighborhoods?

YelaWolf: Yeah, there is always a line around every city, around the world. People draw lines between each other for some reason. Usually it’s financial, like around here, but there are a lot of white people in the projects and a lot of black people in the suburbs, it goes both ways too. There are still lines being drawn down here, it’s some shit that trickled down through generations that was inevitable.

For the most part, for me it was never a real issue, nothing I couldn’t handle anyway. I can imagine someone from out of town would find it shocking, the outright racial stuff.

AmalgamDigital.com: I heard skateboarding introduced you further into Hip-Hop, how did your love of music get you involved with KP and Ghet-O-Vision? How was the transition from you listening to the music to getting involved with the scene?

YelaWolf: It was one particular day specifically, I was in Berkeley, California, pursuing a skateboarding career, but I kept getting hurt. I threw in everything I had and went out there, but after getting hurt continuously and severely twisting my ankle 4 times I took a stand.

I was a skate rat with my crew then and we were all at the Food Not Bombs Park getting food with the homeless people. It was then when I stood up and said I am through with this shit, and I’m going to go pursue this music shit. I just went in on it, for the past 6 or 7 years I’ve been really driven to be heard. Having a profession in the music business is validating and humbling at the same time. Working with legendary people that I grew up listening to, I get besides myself sometimes because it’s easy to forget what an impact these people made when you are around them but its dope, I love what I do.

I’ll always be a skateboarder, but I chose the time to stop pursuing skateboarding as a profession, getting a sponsor and all that shit, and getting focused on something I felt I had a better chance at making it in. I felt I had more talent in writing records than in skateboarding, you know?

AmalgamDigital.com: Hip-Hop is more urban with fitted hats and shit, do you get any bizarre reactions to your unique style?

YelaWolf: It’s always like that initially, when people have never heard my music or seen me before. It’s easy to forget you’re a white boy when you love this shit so much and you do it like its breathing air, its easy to forget you are different, that you don’t look like everyone else. I get reminded of that like when I was opening up for Raekwon in NYC. Looking out at Rae’s fans, hardcore Wu-Tang fans, they’ve been fans forever, some are in their late 30’s, you know? Proving to them that I am worth being there can get to your nerves but you got to tough it out and face it, and you better do it good or you’re fucked.

AmalgamDigital.com: Speaking of nerves, when you are getting ready to snap for a performance, what are 5 songs would you pick?

YelaWolf: And Justice For All by Metallica, maybe some Kraftwerk, just for the roots of it. Throw on some Hieroglyphics, or some Outkast…Triple 6 Mafia! Yeah man, I think that would get me crunk enough to go and show out.

AmalgamDigital.com: What’s your process for doing music?

YelaWolf: It comes in different styles, I’ve wrote records without music, and just go into the studio with the whole song already in my head.

Trunk Muzik we created together (me and Will Power) and outside of “Fuck You”, “I Wish” and “Mixing Up The Medicine”, the rest of that was created in one week in the back of my crib. We came back here and mashed out, we made the beats and wrote the record at the same time and then we recorded the vocals that weekend. I’ve never done that before, I never wrote the record and made the beat and had a complete recording session like that. We setup to do vocals that next weekend, which was a first for me, if I write I am used to cutting vocals that same night.

AmalgamDigital.com: Word, because I really enjoyed Trunk Muzik, it was more what I was looking for, from the hype I heard about you. I enjoyed Slick Rick E. Bobby and Stereo but Trunk Muzik is the sound I was looking for. Crazy Energy.

YelaWolf: Yeah, we set out to make a project like that. I had never furiously did a straight rap project. For some reason or another, I have never found it in me to snap all the way lyrically, I never thought it was necessary to make a dope record, but with Trunk Muzik I just wanted to snap on every fucking record and it paid off. Seeing peoples reactions to those records are going to last me a lifetime because I had yet to pull out the stops yet until Trunk Muzik and I will absolutely get better. Lyrically I really went in to let people know I am serious about this rap shit and I can handle any beat or any tempo and also on top of that to make a project that either people will love or hate.

AmalgamDigital.com: I see Trunk Muzik is produced predominately by Will Power, how long have you been working with him and how did you find him?

YelaWolf: Will Power is a friend I’ve had for a long time, and we just kept in touch over time. He has always been super talented but no one ever really understood how to write to his beats. He has a sound all to his own and I’ve always loved it. He’s done well hustling beats in South Carolina but he’s never had a breaking project and I’ve fought to get him on every project; he was on Slick Rick E. Bobby and had a couple of records on the album that was supposed to come out on Columbia. So when the concept of Trunk Muzik came up I called him like “Will this is all you, you’ll kill this shit” because he understands that sound, and he killed it. We paid a lot of attention to everything we were doing, he was real particular about his drums, snares, everything, the mix, the drops and everything was paid attention to. Him and I stepped up and pushed ourselves to make the best project that we could.

AmalgamDigital.com: Speaking of Columbia, did you keep any connections or networks while you were there?

YelaWolf: Nah man, the team I went there with I left there with, fully. I was only there for about 6 months then Rick Rubin came and cleaned house. I never got to meet Rick and I don’t even know the full story but I know we uprooted as Ghet-O-Vision and went back to the streets with KP (Kawan Prather), Jeremy Jones and Courtney Sills. Through these past two years KP has partnered with Malay as a producer and partner in Ghet-O-Vision.

AmalgamDigital.com: You got any words for Rick Rubin?

YelaWolf: I would be honored to meet him and work with Rick Rubin as would anybody else, he is a guru of sorts, I would say waddup… “What up Rick?!”

AmalgamDigital.com: Rumor: Did you really get Millie Jackson to re-do the vocals over her sample on “Fuck You”?

YelaWolf: Ahh, Keisha Jackson, her daughter, yeah. KP is friends with Keisha, I brought the record to him and he was like “This is perfect, I know Keisha, Millie’s daughter I am going to get her to cut vocals on it tonight” we were like get the fuck outta here but he called her and she came to cut the vocals so yeah.

AmalgamDigital.com: That was a great little tidbit, speaking of collaborations, I just heard you on “Go Crazy” with Rich Boy, anything thing else you want to highlight?

YelaWolf: Its funny man, that Rich Boy record was recorded like, damn, over a year ago, you’re the first person to ask me about that. I went down south to work with Jim Jonsin to possibly write a hook or get on a record with Rich Boy when we ended up doing that record, I don’t even know how it got onto the internet. Its dope, I am glad people can hear it but I’d like to get back in the studio with Rich Boy and work some more.

As far as stuff coming out I got a mixtape I’m dropping in March called Chevy Metal. We’re going to be taking old classic heavy metal records and doing interpolations and remixing with chops & breaks, and putting together a classic. Sampling from Dio, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne…well I already said Black Sabbath but you know, etc.

Kind of like a sequel to Stereo but that used a lot of drum breaks, but Chevy Metal will be 808 heavy and a little less musical, more raw samples, and more good loops, more raw.

AmalgamDigital.com: You’ve been going real heavy, I’ve been hearing about you constantly for the last 3 months, I’m assuming your going to ride this momentum, so what’s after Chevy Metal, are you working towards an album?

YelaWolf: Yeah, the albums in progress, its years in the making because we never got a release we are sitting on a bunch of dope records that will be reworked. I can’t tell you what the album is going to sound because we worked really fast at Ghet-O-Vision. I will say that we are trying to crush every previous project, every time we step out we are trying to make a better album. After Trunk Muzik we are trying to put out something with Chevy Metal then something more amazing with the album. My goal is to make the album sound like an album so when you hear it you can differentiate between mixtapes/street albums from the album. There should be a clear difference in sound on the record.

AmalgamDigital.com: To wrap up, here’s the scenario: You’re at a bar, what are you drinking and what’s playing on the jukebox?

YelaWolf: Some PBR, Hank Williams playing, I’m at the Clermont Lounge looking at a 50 year old white lady strip, and I just gave her a $5 tip to give me an Alabama Slammer.

Connect with YelaWolf:

http://YelaWolf.net

http://twitter.com/YelaWolf

http://facebook.com/pages/YelaWolf/12206413797