Trial By Fire

Mixing raw biography with folk mythmaking, the twang-infested *Trial By Fire* finds Yelawolf reminiscing on his hardscrabble Alabama roots. The rapper plays both the roadhouse bluesman spitting rhymes of a doomed childhood over scorching guitar (“Trial By Fire”) and the country troubadour chronicling family struggles and strife over a sadly plucked acoustic (“Keeps Me Alive”). Wynonna Judd adds her deep, gospel-inflected voice to the latter, and the album also boasts a cameo from Kid Rock, whose rebellious howl punches through the Southern-fried rap-rocker “Get Mine.”

Sauntering into a smoky roadside dive with a cowboy hat, rapper Yelawolf gives his audience a reintroduction on his third album, Trial by Fire, which finds him embracing the sounds of his Southern roots.