Yelawolf

The video for Yelawolf’s “Pop The Trunk,” off Yelawolf’s self-released Trunk Muzik mix-tape, sort of looks as if the setting and meth-dealing characters of Winter’s Bone got airlifted into a Geto Boys video. It’s a rural mirror of hypermasculine, urban gangster rap—the same exaggerated violence and poverty, but with meth instead of crack, trailers instead of projects, deer carcasses swinging in the background, and a shotgunned-down body lying on leaves instead of pavement. On his full-length major-label debut, Radioactive, Yelawolf raises hell with the loudest collaborators he can round up—including Mystikal, Gangsta Boo, Lil Jon, and Mr. Slim Shady himself—though the amount of pop sheen hardly fits his particular backwoods crunk.

Updated 03/01/2012