The cover to Alabama rapper Yelawolf's new mixtape exemplifies two schools of artwork that we've investigated here at The Awl. 1) The prominent-sunglasses album cover and 2) Rappers with American flags. But, oddly, the above image is reminiscent of nothing so much as traditionalist troubadour Leon Redbone.
Check out this video from former Tribe Called Quest affiliate Consequence and former Lil Kim affiliate Maino. It's beautiful and bucolic. They're in the woods. With deer and squirrels and birds. It's very weird, right, with Maino rhyming about shooting people with a chrome .45 and hollering "Brooklyn!" in a club? But as jarring as it is, the juxtaposition of sound and vision, I like it. It's like that awesome episode of "The Sopranos."
A deer makes an appearance in the new video from Yelawolf and Gucci Mane, too.
In this beginning of this clip, nicely filmed by the frustratingly-named director Yours Truly, the rapper Yelawolf visits People's Park in Berkeley, and talks about his time there as a homeless runaway—when he'd hang out there and "just be." It's nice when he apologizes to an old woman who walks by at the time he says the word "motherfucker." Then he skateboards and tells the story of calling home to his mom, and returning to Alabama, where he grew up. But the best part is his performance of "Pop the Trunk," from his album, Trunk Musik 0-60, which came out last week—it's one of the best songs [...]
I am very much anti-gun in real life. So it's always disturbed me just how much I enjoy shoot-em-up gangster movies or war movies or rap songs. I'm not like a fetishist, for the weaponry itself. I don't have posters over my desk of women in bikinis firing Uzis or whatever. But I do like some tough-guy talk at the end of a barrel-on screen or through some speakers.
This is big big news in rap. It's a new song from Dr. Dre, who is pretty much inarguably the greatest producer in the music's history. It's also, reportedly, an advance single from Dre's third solo album, Detox, a project rap fans have been waiting for, have know the title of, for nearly ten years now.
