Everlast Trash? 'White Trash Beautiful' album

Everlast has the blues. Not like on his multi-platinum 1998 album Whitey Ford Sings the Blues or even its follow up, 2000's Eat at Whitey's. No, this time you're goddamn right Whitey has the blues ... and he's not afraid to shed a couple of tears singing about them.

"Honesty is my only armor," Everlast explains of nakedly emotional songs like "This Kind of Lonely" and "Sleeping Alone," from his long-awaited fourth solo album, White Trash Beautiful.

Inspired by everything from the Neil Young and Waylon Jennings records his construction worker dad used to listen to when Everlast (born Erik Schrody) was a kid, to his mother's Motown albums and classic '80s rappers, White Trash Beautiful is hip-hop the way only Everlast can do it: raw, bluesy and with his broken heart pinned to his sleeve.

"The bulk of these songs are inspired by a relationship I was involved in over the past few years, which I managed to screw up, just like most of them,"Everlast explained of moody tracks like "Broken" and "Lonely Road", both of which touch on the album's unofficial, but consistent theme of loneliness. "I guess that's just where the good songs come from, you're either dealing with love or death. Chuck D once said something that affected me a lot. He said, ?it ain't hard to act hard, it's hard to buck the odds and express your soft side.? 'Whitey Ford' gave me the confidence to let it all hang out. If you're not comfortable in your own skin by the time you're 30, I feel bad for you."

But showing that soft side and going soft are two very different things. Everlast, who survived a nearly fatal heart attack in 1997, said he's stronger for the trials he's been through, which is why he's not afraid to whip up some old school skull-cracking drama for his faithful, "knucklehead" fans. The rapper brings his hard side on the sinister "Warning," a bouncy, gun-blazing series of boasts in which Everlast cautions, "Back of the liquor store, trying to break these chumps/ bunch head in a circle, daddy's handin' out lumps."

Lest you not get the message, he snipped a screaming sample from an old House of Pain song for the grinding acoustic rocker "Pain," and he turns out to be less than a holy roller on "God Wanna," in which the rapper struggles to balance the devil on one shoulder with the angel on his other.

"I'm a pimp, I'm a thief, I'm a killer, I'm a dealer, I'm a holy man preacher, I'm a teacher, I'm a healer, I'm a mover, I'm a shaker, I'm a giver, I'm a taker, I'm a long time, bona fide big money maker," he sings in his gravelly roar, never quite deciding which side he wants to land on.

Since leaving House of Pain in 1997, Everlast has consistently reinvented his sound, traveling from the thuggish, good time drinking hip-hop of the group's Irish-themed anthems to the introspective hit "What It's Like" from the multi-platinum "Whitey Ford." The journey continues on White Trash Beautiful, on which he tempers his more streetwise hip-hop side with raw acoustic tales about loneliness and heartbreak, including the lush, humble ballad ?Broken." Recorded mostly on his own dime in New York and Los Angeles between record deals, White Trash Beautiful is the sound of Everlast making peace with his past, admitting his weaknesses and trying to put his life back together.

"A lot of what's on this album is growing up," he said of songs like album opener, ?Blinded by the Sun". That song reinvents the traditional country murder ballad by borrowing its central character from the Quentin Tarantino-penned film "True Romance," a sample from Eric B. and Rakim and lyrical inspiration from Public Enemy and Neil Young. "If Johnny Cash had written it," he said, "he would have had the man killing the woman. Mine's more of a 'Burning Bed' kindof thing. It's giving the women a little gangsta thing."

Though most of the tracks on White Trash Beautiful are built around Everlast's hoarse singing, acoustic guitars and spare, programmed beats, he's still a rapper at heart, even if his songs don't fit the floss and gloss sound of much of today's hip-hop.

"There's nothing I won't touch, whether it's jazz, funk or country," Everlast said. "But I still consider what I do hip-hop, as bizarre as it might sound to some people. I'm just tying to further the art form. Emotion and feeling are what inspire me and there's not a lot of that out there in hip-hop these days. When I was 19, let's get drunk and jump around was my emotion, but I'm 34 now."

"See, hip-hop took from every form of music on earth to create itself and I'm trying to reinject that into other forms of music, because I think hip-hop is lost now. I feel like my dad talking about it, but when I came up there was Run-DMC, BDP, N.W.A., PE -- the whole alphabet -- and they were all doing something different. Everyone is doing everybody else's thing these days. When I was 20, I found rap and it was a form of rebellion. Now I'm reaching back to the things I shunned because it was my parent?s music."

The album's first single, the title track, "White Trash Beautiful," is a blues-based travelogue of the kinds of people Everlast has observed at truck stops across the country on his tours. While the characters, a pregnant hash-slinging trailer park queen and her long-haul trucking man, are mostly fictional, the distance they feel is real enough. "White trash beautiful, something you should know/ My heart belongs to you," Everlast sings over a slide guitar. "These people live a pretty fucked up life, but they manage to love each other and get through it. That song and 'This Kind of Lonely' are all real. They aren't lyrics. I people-watch on the road and I take my knowledge of how lonely it is out there and I can write that story. They are thoughts or conversations that I've had in my head."

"This Kind of Lonely" is so real it begins with the sound of actual rain drops, which Everlast recorded by sticking a microphone outside the window of his room. The song poured out of him, including his spin on a classic Hank Williams chorus, which in Everlast's hands turns into "I'm so lonesome I could die." That song hits so close to home that he said the album's co-producer, long time friend and collaborator Dante Ross, can't even listen to it anymore. The track also features Everlast re-teaming with veteran string arranger David Campbell (Green Day, Evanescence, Brandy).

Rap songs about being insecure and scared? Go ahead and test him if you dare, but it's just a day in the life of Everlast. "I don't know if you can put yourself out there too much," he said. "I have an ego, and you hear that in my songs and see me on stage, but it doesn't mean you won't catch me in the street crying. But ... just because I'm talking about love, don't think I won't bust your ass," he jokingly added with a smile.

The reality check continues on the funk/rap tune, "Sleeping Alone," which catalogs real scenes from Everlast's failed relationship: an old picture of his lover washing her hair, an empty makeup drawer and a $50,000 engagement ring he doesn't want back.

He gives the ?knuckleheads? a few more to bounce to on the reggae-tinged, snarling "Soul Music" and offers shout outs to his Latin brothers and sisters on "Sad Girl." But it's on the twangy "Angel" that Everlast gets the most hardcore.

Though it's a mid-tempo rocker, the song about the search for a perfect woman hits like a heavy metal bomb. "She's my angel, she's my lover, she's my very best friend/ I hate her cuz I love her so I hurt her again," he sings in a rasp, realizing, "Don't want no other lover, wan' go do it again." The song came straight out of his personal life. "It's the search for that perfect woman and that moment when you realize, fuck, you already had her!," he said.

Everlast doesn't know if the world is really ready to accept a sensitive thug, but when you've faced down death, there's not a lot left that will scare you.

"I'm not afraid to die and I don't want to, but at the same time, I did," he says of his heart scare. "I suffered through an immensely painful death and thanks to technology I came back. I know when death comes next time, I'm not trippin' on it. I'll be ready, like, 'Is it my time, okay, let's go.' These songs are about how you're born alone and die alone. No matter if you have a wife and family, there are things you have to handle on your own as a man. All I'm saying is I can carry the load, but I wouldn't mind having a bit of company."

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Everlast Trash? - White Trash Beautiful