Recap Yelawolf at the Majestic Theatre

“Y’all cool over there?,” Yelawolf asked at the Majestic Theatre on Tuesday night, directing his attention to the mob of people he just crushed during his first (of two) dives off the Majestic’s 15-foot balcony. “I don’t wanna hurt nobody. I just wanna party.”

Judging from the crowd response, you’d be excused for thinking Yelawolf is the most popular rapper on Earth. The packed crowd even knew the words to deep cuts like his hook on Juelz Santana’s ignored “Mixin’ Up The Medicine,” but the dude doesn’t have a Billboard hit to his name, and his highest profile moment was signing to Shady Records earlier this year. In the year since the release of his well-received mixtape, Trunk Muzik, Yelawolf has gone from major label exile, to rap blog curio, to a guest on a Big Boi album, to a major label-signed performer again, to the rare rapper than can get a crowd that knows all his lyrics at a Madison venue on a Tuesday night. It’d be hard to imagine any other frequent 2DopeBoyz-featured artist accomplishing that. Put it this way: Saigon is never going to come to Madison and have a swarm of college-aged kids handing him their Badger hats and trying to keep up with his flow.

Taking the stage to ecstatic applause following proficient—if underwhelming—sets from local talents Smokes and MC Starr, Yelawolf launched into a set heavy on his nearly flawless Interscope debut, Trunk Muzik 0-60. Attacking the stage like a punk singer let loose over 16 bars, constantly climbing on speaker stacks, balconies, and headbanging, Yelawolf snarled through highlights like “I Wish,” “Box Chevy,” and “Billy Crystal.” Those three songs are as good a distillation of Yelawolf’s unique milieu as any: He’s from Gadsden, Alabama, which he reminded the crowd multiple times—a land of rusty cars, guys with confederate flags playing Beanie Siegel (because “Lynyrd Skynyrd didn’t talk about moving keys of coke, man”), and meth dealers. But the biggest crowd response came during “I Just Wanna Party,” his single with Gucci Mane, the one bend toward commercialism Yelawolf has made to date. Maybe it worked?

The Madison show last night is part of Yelawolf’s first major headlining tour, and it represents something of a coming out party for him. At a time when rap has been split into micro-genres and titans like Ghostface can’t sell records anymore, it’s possible for a prodigiously tattooed, mullet-hawked, weirdo rapper from Alabama with an alter ego named Catfish Billy to play rapturous and consistently thrilling shows to adoring crowds. Yelawolf isn’t the biggest rapper on Earth, but to this crowd, he might as well be.