TEAM RNS PRESENTS

TITLE: White Trash Beautiful

LABEL: Island / Def Jam

RIPPER: Team RNS Spring

215kbps avg - Rock
0hr 58min total- 94.6mb

RELEASE DATE: 2004-05-25
RIP DATE: 2004-04-10

01 Blinded By The Sun             4:08

03 White Trash Beautiful          4:01

06 This Kind Of Lonely            4:40

10 Lonely Road                   l Mu ▄██▄   ▐██▓   11 Two Pieces Of Drama            4:10

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

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

"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

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

"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,

"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

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

"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,

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

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

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."

This is the Easter egg surprise RNS
wants to bring you, enjoy!

Happy Easter everybody!

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