Name	Everlast
Height
Naionality	New York
Date of Birth	18 August of 1969
Place of Birth	Long Island, New York
Famous for	rap/hip-hop

Everlast is hip-hop's least likely auteur: a teen discovery of original gangsta Ice-T, who rose from a sullen white boy aping rap cliches to become a brooding artist fluent in hip-hop, folk, rock, and meaningful social commentary. Born Erick Schrody, Everlast first hit the charts with the furious shamrocks-and-beer trio House of Pain, but found his true voice retooled as a solo artist, with a stirring hybrid of turntables and acoustic guitars he called "hick hop," equal parts thug and cracker.

Nothing like that was evident on Everlast's disposable 1990 debut, Forever Everlasting, a thin collection of unremarkable beats and raps, stripped down and generic. He works up some empty dance-floor beats for "What is This?" and goes urban romantic (a la LL Cool J) for "On the Edge," and the effect is soft and unconvincing, leaving no impression at all. But Everlast was no Marky Mark either, and soon transformed himself into a burly, tattooed frontman overflowing with attitude and Irish testosterone in House of Pain (1992's double-platinum "Jump Around"). It bounced and rocked, but suggested none of the layers of feeling to come. Everlast was an artist in transition.

Everlast's true self emerged on Whitey Ford Sings the Blues. Hip-hop was now just one of many ingredients in his sound, and he was as likely to pick up an acoustic guitar as bust a hard-core rap groove. Mixing guitars and beats was no gimmick but a genuine statement of self, landing him close to Beck's musical territory. Everlast opens with some playful nursery rhyme funk (echoing the Tom Tom Club) that announces, "The white boy is back, and you know he never smoked crack." Jokes aside, he included lots of hardheaded raps circa 1998, all toughness and bluster, rapping on getting laid and paid ("Dolla-dolla-dolla-dolla-bill, y'all!"). More important was the debut of Everlast as postmodern bluesman: he redefined himself as a world-weary troubadour for a new age with "What It's Like." "Ends" rode a similar talking blues groove, colliding guitar with scratches into a new genre, where the real folk blues meet hip-hop, delivering social commentary as potent as Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City."

Eat at Whitey's dug even deeper into roots, cranking up the funk, even turning Slick Rick's "Children's Story" into fresh Delta hoodoo with some human beatbox from the Roots' Rahzel. "Black Jesus" is an ominous, full-boil rocker, with Everlast's white rasp sounding straight outta Lynyrd Skynyrd. The presence of guests Carlos Santana and B-Real suggests the kind of range at his disposal, as does the sticky funk with Cee-Lo on "We're All Gonna Die." This time, however, inspiration didn't translate into radio. But not even disappointing sales for Eat at Whitey's shook Everlast's musical muse. Four years later, White Trash Beautiful turned his wounded growl further inward; he's still tough but not so limited by machismo that he can't feel loss or longing. The result is often closer to Hank Williams than beat street, as a shell-shocked Everlast rhymes about a woman he used to know, even resorting to pedal-steel guitar on the dreamy "This Kind of Lonely." He rocks harder on the boastful "Soul Music," but the tracks on lost love are devastating. Hard, soft, and soulful, White Trash Beautiful isn't the sound of commercial calculation. It's basic instinct. (STEVE APPLEFORD)