Undercover Folk Songs From Yelawolf's "Love Story"

If you checked out the review for Yelawolf’s most recent effort Love Story, you may have noticed that there is quite a split on the merit of the record among fans and staff alike. The record is a celestial, immersive journey that does its darndest in attempt to assemble a collage of sounds, genres, and stories in effort to produce something fresh. While the results have wedged the hip-hop community down the middle, having quite the polarizing effect, there is one thing that everyone can agree on.

Whether you like it or not, the country-folk influence is definitely on Love Story. However, in many instances the influence goes beyond just serving as a muse for the Alabama-bred rock-rapper. Instead, many tracks that appear to be merely inspired, are in actuality creating honest-to-God folk songs that carry the tradition of the Southern music.  

So, what makes a folk song? It goes beyond twangy voices or acoustic guitar swoons. In fact, those aren’t required at all. All you need is a narrative story or a specific message expressed over a repeating melody. While songs like “Devil in My Veins,” “Have a Nice Flight” and “American You” are more of a blatant country or folk music offering by Yelawolf, Love Story does include some less obvious homages to his roots.

Click along as we investigate Love Story tracks that follow this form.

It’s wildly appropriate that on the track that shares the name of one of the biggest country/folk artists, as well as one of Yela's biggest influences, adheres to the traditions that he set forth. While this track doesn’t utilize the acoustic guitar that cowboy Johnny Cash liked, it does poetically use his surname to exemplify the bravery it takes to perform in front of a crowd. The verses take us through the step-by-step of the high-anxiety scenario, before divulging the legendary Cash name and background howls as a form of release.

Despite its slickly delivered sipid lyrical flow, at its core "Til It’s Gone" is just as reminiscent as Bob Dylan’s "Idiot Wind" or Conor Oberst’s "When The President Talks to God" as it is to Eminem’s "I Am" or even (on the more corny kind of side) Linkn Park’s "Faint." The song is a relentless, unflinching and unbudging, anthem about accepting manhood - as well as the growing pains and priorities that come along with manhood.

On "Heartbreak" Yela progressively builds up more and more courage to not care about the one that’s holding him back. Another venom-laced break-up song, which despite being a popular topic for artists wanting radio-play, had a very cushy home in the folk music and country music genre over the years. The feeling of anguish over an adversely effective woman transcends genre.

The melancholy chords of "Ball and Chain" which act as connective tissue between two of the more aggressive tracks off of Love Story ("Whiskey in a Bottle" and "Till It’s Gone"). The melody is a depressing earworm that repeats itself, despite the lyrics never revisiting a thing other than "I’m the boy with the ball and chain, looking down from my jet plane."

This is an honorable mention for this list.  While Yelawolf’s contributions to the track are quite folky, the track loses that vibe the longer featured guest Eminem’s (awesome) tangent goes on. However, a gander at the first two verses by Yelawolf (and even some of Eminem’s lyrics) display something close to a folk-tale about someone struggling with their faith in Jesus Christ when feeling like the apocalypse is nigh. The struggle is especially real in the chorus, which states (even after the Eminem additions), "To the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I hold you nearest/Let the trumpets blow with Your appearance, I can almost hear it."

On "Change," Yela details three very different phases of his life in a chronological timeline.  Thus, a narrative story is born.  He begins talking about his difficult past in the first verse, with lyrics like "Killers done found this touch a long time ago/Had to walk hours before I found this new kind of road," and "The wind got in my sails in the creek, water no paddle boat/Nobody picking me up off the ground when my saddle broke." The second verse presents a more motivated, albeit a little complacent narrator "What's up world? I'm in Alabama chillin'. And I just stuck a shot for the ones who stop and they hit the ceiling."

The conclusion of the song comes in the form of a spoken-word ramble, which very much comes from a more sensitized narrator than the previous ones. Each stanza dictates a growing artist.