Yelawolf is back in Nashville, Tennessee not long after performing a sold-out show with rapper-turned-country star Jelly Roll in Denver, Colorado. Wolf’s explosive set was a lesson in how all artists should command a stage—he was energetic, engaging, and a little bit enigmatic. Wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses, a black beret, and a leather jacket, the Alabama-born artist doesn’t look like the average MC. The tattoos, leather cuts, and patches make him look more like a Hell’s Angel than a former Shady Records signee. But that’s partly what makes Yelawolf so intriguing. Not to mention his musical versatility is almost otherworldly.
Born Michael Wayne Atha in a small town in Alabama, Yelawolf jumped around as a kid but spent the bulk of his childhood in Antioch, Tennessee. He naturally gravitated toward the rebelliousness of skateboarding, punk rock, rock, and hip-hop, which inadvertently shaped Wolf’s future. His entire catalog is an amalgamation of those influences—from 2008’s Stereo: A Hip Hop Tribute to Classic Rock and 2015’s Love Story to 2019’s Trunk Muzik III and his more recent project with Shooter Jennings, 2022’s Sometimes Y. Translated live, it’s clear he was born for the stage.
“I’ve never had stage fright,” he tells High Times. “But I was definitely raised around a different type of live performance. I grew up going to underground hip-hop and punk rock shows in Atlanta. My first gangster rap show was Three 6 Mafia and Mystikal, and that was rowdy. I like rowdy. So when we first started doing shows in Atlanta, we had kids that would wear helmets to our shows; it was that crazy. We just kind of made it our thing, at least I did—head-banging, crowd surfing. Then I applied that energy to hip-hop because …
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Author: Kyle Eustice / High Times
