J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - April '10 #1: " Box Chevy - Pt. 3" by Yelawolf featuring Rittz

I finally wrap up the April countdown five days into May. I had crackhead thoughts the other week of starting a Top 40 countdown music blog that would throw up 10 videos a day, Monday through Friday, and shit might stay on the countdown the following week, like Casey Kasem's old school shit, but with a new school media flare. There's no way I could keep that up, without investors who could actually pay me to fuck around on the internet all day long, but then I just threw it out there into the maelstrom, so some asshole who writes half as good as me but four times better connections is gonna convince his money-holding asshole dude he knows to fund such an expedition into internettery. I'm making my mark however I can.
Yelawolf was the hottest shit ever, about four weeks ago. If his bonafide CD that comes out this summer is even half as good as his Trunk Muzik mixtape this song comes from, he will be this year's most definite can't miss rap prospect that ultimately misses, and eventually everybody hates. I remember seeing Yelawolf in one of the last Ozone magazines I ever read at the grocery store, and I was like, "Oh shit, a long braided hair whiteboy rapper from Alabama!" Back in the day, there was this dude Tip (aka Tank aka Eugene) who had a little junkyard at a crossroads in Cumberland County, and he fixed up cars to sell, going for one a month at $1200 apiece, because that meant he could have $100 a month for the next year. It was a financial plan that ended up with mad mason jars full of money buried throughout the junkyard that he dug up one day to go down to the bank and buy his place. No shit. He was one of a few father figures to me back in the day when my folks ran wild with a bunch of other wild assed folks, and an image that I was not there to see but I can see vividly is my mom telling me about driving this hot rod stationwagon my dad had at the time, while she was pregnant with me (age 16), and my dad, Tip, this other guy Bozo (aka J.T. aka a guy who lives like fifteen minutes away from me with no running water and an awesome place that I just don't see often enough but I'm about to have 500 pounds of pig meat so that's a good reason to drop by and give the ol' boy a ham), and another guy Wolfie (aka Wynn, who when I was a kid lived in a converted school bus and we'd go visit him on the side of the road, which was the coolest shit ever when you're five, to go hang out in a school bus with a woodstove that your parents' friend lives in), those four guys were all hanging on a door handle each, sliding through the snow my mom was being forced to drive the car through. Shit, that little incubationary scene alone probably says as much about why I'm the way I am as a hundred high dollar psychoanalytic therapy sessions could ever find. Well, Tip, in his last marriage, had a kid about my youngest sister's age named Tony. Tony was a fucking tank of a human being from even the earliest age. Like at age 2 (and I was probably about 9 or 10), I was afraid to fuck with him. Seriously. The kid was cock diesel from birth. Later in life, he ended up back at Eugene's junkyard, and I went by there one time for one thing or another, and Tony was kicking it, long ass braided hair, flannel, looking gangsta as fuck, but chilling with the rednecks that rolled through. I wanted to be like, "Shit Tony, I smoke blunts. I listen to gangsta shit." And I could see he wanted to be like that too, but we were from the rural place we were from, and you respected your elders. Maybe we'd run the same circles and could smoke blunts together elsewhere, but it wasn't gonna happen there at the crossroads junkyard.
Tony ended up killing himself at Tip's house, and they had a funeral down there, plus a party at the junkyard that I went to. I was couch crashing in a most fucked up fashion in Richmond at the time, and I remember rolling in and Tip was sitting on the picnic table and said, "Well if it isn't my long lost wayward son Raven." Having his kid just died, that shit hit me hard. Them older dudes looked out for me, even if I was an egghead to them. Shit, they were probably all proud of the fact I went to college when none of them even finished high school. It wasn't too much later that Tip died laying on the couch in his living room, and they had a funeral in the junkyard, because there was an old grave there so he could be buried on his own property as it was grandfathered in past the stupid state laws where you couldn't have family cemetaries anymore. I've actually been to multiple funerals in junkyards, believe it or not, and they've always been more real than regular ones. I mean, why dress yourself up in death and put on airs about Bible-thumping and straight-laced living? A lot of us live the back roads and backwoods life on purpose, because there aren't all those lines painted on the road to tell you what you can and where you can't and how you should and all that. You know, and you try to keep it between the ditches and survive. But some sharp curves were meant to have plastic bouquets of flowers in them, and that's just how it is.
I got way into this Yelawolf mixtape because this was music Tony would've pumped, and all the fuckin' small town go-nowhere half-racist half-hip hop cock diesel pieces of proud rebel shit whiteboys all around. I've been educated far beyond my intelligence, as Jerry Clower would say, and I try to walk that upwardly mobile life right now, for some reason, but there's no denying that's my fuckin' people. I drive my beat-up pick-up truck with my button-down shirt and pressed khakis and $6 dress shoes from Wal-Mart going to my job, and in fact today, I was driving our new Chinese doctor to go get her social security card from the SS Office on the other side of town, and a three-pack of piece of shit white kids like that were cutting sideways across the median strip, ragged as fuck but with that post-hip hop whiteboy swagger that didn't even exist when I was 13-years-old. You could tell they were up to no good, which was perfect. I wanted to be walking to the grocery store to steal wine, too.
Okay, I guess I should talk about the song as well. Yelawolf is supposed to blow up, but probably won't. This song is fucking bass-crazy. Like if you have a nice system, this is a great one to pump until fuses blow. Odd thing about this song is the guest rapper, Rittz, actually steals the show. There is very little about Rittz inside the internet, but he is apparently some suburban Atlanta rapper with longhair who has an alternate rap name of Jonny Valiant. I know the age is probably off, but I hope to fucking god this is because he grew up watching wrestling on TBS and was a big Jimmy Valiant fan. I hope to fucking god.
Two late additions to this long-winded commentary are the fact this shit came on my gaypod in the truck today riding back from Richmond, and it's a definite mirror rattler. I wish I had a solid system to just rattle the fuckin' rear view right off the windshield, bass stronger than factory glue. Also, we've played this song enough in the house for the ol' lady to already parody it with "my green Kia" in place of the "my box Chevy" part, which is probably more appropriate for your average ass average motherfucker.
STEAL "Box Chevy - Pt. 3"
NEXT MONTH: Perhaps some of the new Hank Williams III CD, or go-go music, or Slow Motion Sounds, or who knows what bullshit I'll compulse over by then!