Hick-hop juggernaut Yelawolf may strike some as Alabama's answer to Eminem (who
signed the 31-year-old rapper to his Shady label). But the boozy, stone-faced rhymes on his debut leave little room for laughs: "In this forest I’m a lonely tree/ My limbs are covered in tattoos, and my roots, they run deep," he raps. What Yelawolf lacks in wit he makes up for with gravitas: "Radioactive Introduction" is an intoxicating trunk-rattler, surveying his past as his Impala rolls at a snail’s creep, and "Growin' Up in the Gutter" is a Trent Reznor-style teethgrinder. Backwoods PG-13 love songs like "Good Girl" might earn radio ears by deploying country-boy charm in meet-cute stories. But the dark end of the Dirty South is where he really lives.

Listen to "Throw It Up":

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“My President”

Young Jeezy teams up with Nas on this track, in which he compare his own success with the idea of an African-American winning the Democratic Party's nomination in the 2008 presidential election. "When I pulled up in my car, that s--- was unbelievable to people in my neighborhood because they were like, 'We grew up with him. How the hell did he accomplish this?'" he told Rolling Stone. "I feel like it was the same way with Obama. I grew up all this time, but I've never seen a black man this close to running this country."