Yelawolf

Short Biography

Atha was born in Gadsden, Alabama, and is of Caucasian and Cherokee descent. His mother gave birth to him when she was 16. Atha's father was absent during his childhood; a time during which he attended over 15 schools and was heavily influenced by the culture in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Antioch, Tennessee, Gainesville, Florida and Atlanta, Georgia. While trying to stay out of trouble in a turbulent home life filled with drug and alcohol abuse, he discovered rap music in Tennessee and it soon became an obsession.“When I lived in Antioch, they’d bus us down to the projects in Nashville to go to school and everything just started clicking with me with rap music and in life"..."I felt the connection, these kids had the same problems that I had at home, ” Atha stated. He competed on the 2005 reality series The Road to Stardom with Missy Elliott. In a December 2010 interview with Canadian music website Exclaim!, he stated that his inspiration to break into hip-hop was OutKast's André 3000.