In either case, they cast Yela as a cheesy pastiche artist. Sometimes that means thigh-slapping, rootsy country ('Have a Great Flight') and sometimes it’s psychedelic southern rock. Love Story has moments that seem to aim at Americana. On 'Disappear' he feigns a cathartic letter to an estranged father-'You told me what you did, carpentry, right?'-and then at the end of the song a supposed-to-be-big reveal falls hopelessly flat: 'I love you daddy, or should I say Christ?' 'Still on that grass like John Deeres,' he raps on 'Whiskey in a Bottle' on 'Love Story', he offers 'Got my weight up like I’m carrying fat people.' Here he is denouncing wannabe rednecks on 'Change': 'Yellin' redneck, you about as red as the color blue is.' Those types of lines not only sound worse the second (and third) time around, they run rampant. Most glaring is Yelawolf’s devolution as a rapper: He’s developed a bad habit of leaning on cringey similes and seems to have forfeited the snappy, accelatory delivery that made 0-60 so fun to listen to and hard to rap along with. With 18 tracks spanning more than 74 minutes, Love Story is far too long to accomplish so little and hits the same notes over and over again. Even worse, this new project seems to cement a damning new identity for Yela: once-compelling mixtape artist, shoddy album-maker. Unfortunately, and for different reasons, Love Story vies with that last album as the worst music of his career as a result, it’s also getting harder to remember the gritty luster of his peak. When Radioactive rolled around in 2011 it felt like Yelawolf had broken a promise, or at least lost himself, in failed (and weird) crossover attempts.

Yelawolf love story cover thread