Slug talks new Atmosphere LP in The Okayplayer Interview
They named their debut Overcast! for a reason. Sean Daley AKA 1/2 of Atmosphere AKA Slug has made looking inward and digging into life’s gray areas an MC artform. And while “Sunshine”may be one of their best-known cuts, most of the pages in Atmosphere’s rap almanac chronicle cloudier skies. It’s a style that has earned Slug both criticism and profound respect from the four corners of the hip-hop world--and given listeners an unusually intimate look at the man behind the mic. Most of all, though, it’s granted Slug and his producer partner-in-crime Ant longevity. Slug has been following his own hip-hop North Star for over twenty years and the Minneapolis-born, bred and based lyricist is without a doubt one of alt-rap’s living legends. He’s released over a dozen records, grown Rhymesayers into a bastion of independent hip-hop and amassed a base of die-hard core fans that love to find themselves within the MC’s introspection--all while trudging through the Minnesota snow.
Atmosphere's 7th record, Southsiders, dropped today and is the group's first full-length release in almost three years. It's also Slug’s first record since turning 40. Listeners of the new LP--which is dedicated to the group's south Minneapolis home turf--will hear a Slug that’s a little less angry but still no less invested in hip-hop, his hometown and the push to challenge his fans. We were lucky enough to chat with Daley about Southsiders, his 80's influences and what it means to make hip-hop from the middle of the continent.
Okayplayer: Can you speak about the writing process and where you wanted to go, lyrically, on Southsiders?
Slug: I never really have an idea of where I wanna go, I just want to do my best to create a feeling with the music. It sucks when you write songs and you hear other good stuff--like you hear a song and you think "Oh, why didn't I write about that?" I don't have any sort of rules about what I could or couldn't do. I didn't force myself to stick to anything. I didn't want to apply the rules too hard to myself.
Other than that, shit was all over the fucking place. Later on we kind of went through and weeded out certain stuff so that we could have a project that felt cohesive, after the fact. But when I was actually writing a lot of it, I was open to whatever. I think that a lot of times we just kind of do whatever happens. Then someone will say "Oh man look there's a theme going on here"--and that's when we start to write a little more seriously.
This record in particular I felt has a little more with regard to mortality and thinking about some sort of bigger "What am I doing?" picture. Mortality is something I hear a lot now in the record that I didn't necessarily know was there when we first started. But in hindsight I started seeing things that made sense. This is what a dad in his 40s should be rapping about. Especially you've got songs like "Star Shaped Heart" which on the surface are kind of just a function of one-liners and a cool vibe, but inside of the music and the lyrics there's all these moments where I was like "Woah, I was actually almost getting with something really heavy right there." There are these moments all over the record that get really close to touching on something heavy.
"Kanye West" is another example of a song where when I first started writing it I was like "Ah, this is cool cause I'm writing a relationship song." I've written a handful of those in my time, you know? But this one isn't mad. I'm not super aggressive. It's not coming from someone who's having a hard time with his love, but instead with the love that I'm trying to talk about. It was love and aggressive but it wasn't angry. The 25-year old me would have written that same song and it would have been angry. I thought it was so cute that things worked out like that. Cute...there's a great fucking hip-hop word.
OKP: In that song, "Kanye West," you have this line, it's kind of the crux of the tune: "Throw your hands in the air like you really do care." I'd call that a continuation of what seems to be a defiance that you often have in your lyrics; defiance against some of the more pervasive norms of hip-hop. You seem to be strongly suggesting in a lot of your lyrics that your listener up their investment in whatever's going on around them, or somehow "wake up".
Slug: Yeah, I was born out of that. I grew up listening to KRS-One and Chuck D, and I felt like these artists were expecting more out of me than just nodding my head to their shit. A big part of what hip-hop informed me of is that you are supposed to expect more of each other. You are supposed to hold yourself and your community up to a very bright light. That's not to say that's how everybody should keep their hip-hop; I'm not trying to suggest or say "This is how hip-hop's supposed to be," but that's just how it is for me and I'll never break out of that.
I expect more from the listener--to do something with themselves. Push yourself, challenge yourself. I sometimes feel as though I have a fickle audience. As in "I don't like your new album," etc. Sometimes I get kids that are just like "Yo, I'm not into what you're doing now because I was into the stuff you were doing in 2002 or 2008." But if any point I've challenged you--not just gotten you to listen to our shit but challenged you? --that's my job, that's what I'm here for.
And I am aging. I'm embracing it, and I'm rapping about it. And there's not many that get to age and rap about it. A lot of my contemporaries have a tendency to try and keep up with whatever the young kids are into, and that's cool, but my challenge is to get 19-year-olds to care about what a 41-year-old actually has to rap about.
OKP: Do you think, then, that apathy is a problem in hip-hop's larger national fanbase?
Slug: I think that apathy's been a longtime problem in the human race. I don't feel like it's a problem in hip-hop anymore than it's a problem when you go to Target. It's funny you ask this because just recently I was having a conversation about different regions of our country and how people are. One of the things that keeps me based in Minnesota is that not everybody likes each other, they don't. There's still a lot of systemic racism. But the thing about Minnesota is that they'll still pull over and help get you out of the ditch if your car's in the snow. Whether you're black or white or this or that, they'll help you get out of the ditch. And maybe they'll call you a name as you're driving off, but they'll still help you.
There's a thing there. In other parts of the countries you don't see that same kind of thing. I've had complete strangers in Minnesota come over to help me, and that would never happen in other places. So I can't say apathy is a hip-hop thing, or even a human thing, it's a cultural thing. The culture in Minnesota and in the midwest is winter--winter fucking kills people. It's breeds an idea of "I'll still help you get out of the ditch. I don't like you, but I feel you."
OKP: Was it difficult when you were starting your career--being in Minneapolis, before the internet--to get access to hip-hop? Was there certain stuff that was harder to find?
Slug: I don't think I was hindered in being able to get my hands on the music that I loved--we had outlets there. We had record stores that loved it just as much as I loved it, so they went out of their way to make sure they always had records for people. By the late '80s rap music was making money for people, even record stores, and so record stores made sure to stock shit. I was a kid, so I had to do whatever I had to do to afford the records, but by 1988 I already had a full-on hardcore addiction to purchasing rap music. Not just dubbing tapes and trading tapes but purchasing it. I had to own everything I could, and that was what made me who I was. You know, pre-internet I had it all. If I didn't have a 12" my friend did.
OKP: How did being located in the middle of the continent shape your artistic direction in your early career?
Slug: I would say it did shape my sound, but maybe not the way people would normally assume. Being in Minneapolis, there weren't so many people there that it was easy to have people that knew how to make music. So Minneapols became a place where everybody there was just doing their best to mimic and make their version of something that they already loved. We had the kids in Minneapolis that were emulating the down south shit and emulating gangsta rap. I'm not saying that in a negative way but just that "Hey that's what rap music sounds like, so that's how people try to make it." And so when I started I was just doing my best version of trying to sound like LL Cool J and KRS-One.
LL Cool J and KRS-One were the dudes that made me want to rap. I wanted to be as dignified and intelligent as KRS-One. You have to remember I was 16, and so for me KRS-One was the new movement. He was like the new Malcom X, the new Martin Luther King, Jr. And then LL Cool J was all alpha male and as a 16 year old I wanted to be that. I wanted to be the dude that was super smart and could also get the ladies--I think that played a huge role. I would say LL Cool J, KRS-One and Prince played the biggest parts in making me who I was. My self-image was a weird, modified mosaic of those three guys.
OKP: Can you name some MCs that you're really a fan of?
Slug: One of my favorite dudes right now out of the city that I live in is Mike the Martyr. He's really dope to me. From out of the city there's Open Mike Eagle. I'm really excited about a lot of the stuff coming out of New York right now because New York's getting weird again, and I like it when New York gets weird because nobody can fuck with New York when New York gets weird.
OKP: Now that we have the web and the ability to put something on Soundcloud and have it travel the world in seconds, do you think geography is still an important factor for hip-hop artists?
Slug: I think geography plays a role in the pre-game. Nowadays it doesn't matter where you're from--you could come from anywhere and be at the party. But where you're from plays into who the fuck you are. I do think it still is important, but I don't think you're necessarily going to be held back by being from somewhere other than the coasts or the dirty south. So now you can get into the game and you can be from anywhere, but if you're bullshit people will still see that you're bullshit.
I feel like we don't give the listeners enough credit. There's still this huge idea of people being tricked into liking this guy or that guy, but there's no tricks going on. I really hope that some day we can get over that insecurity that we're being lied to, even by our own culture. At the end of the day you can tell if a person means what they're doing. You can feel if it's genuine. So now, I don't think it matters where you're from. It ain't where you're from it's where you're at.
>>>Purchase Southsiders here (via iTunes)
Slug talks new Atmosphere LP 'Southsiders' in The Okayplayer Interview
