College Times

Issue date: 4/24/08 Section: Music

Media Credit: Dan Monick

For the past decade, the name “Atmosphere” has grown to become synonymous with the DIY work ethic of underground hip-hop.

From humble beginnings in Minneapolis, Minnesota, DJ/producer Ant and MC/lyricist Slug have built an indie rap empire in the upper Midwest.

On Tuesday, Atmosphere released their highly anticipated sixth album, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold.

College Times recently spoke with Slug about relationships, gangsta rap, overzealous fans, creating the new album and his upcoming collaboration with Brother Ali.

 

You’ve got a distribution deal with a major label. You regularly sell out 1,000+ capacity venues. Your videos are on MTV and your records are reviewed in Rolling Stone. When do you think people will stop calling you “underground”?

I think a lot of people already stopped calling us underground, especially the people who consider themselves underground. They decided we don’t get to be part of their little club anymore. Honestly, it is what it is. Even myself, when I was going through my phase of “Fuck everything that’s not underground,” that was an identity thing. That was me trying to assert my own identity. So I can’t get mad when other people do it. When LL made his fourth record, I was kind of like, “Aw man, there’s three girl songs on here.” And then 15 years later I put out records full of girl songs. I mean, that’s the irony. It is what it is and so I subscribe to all of it. I try to make sure that my perspective is 360 degrees. I try to understand myself as well as the people around me. I try to understand trial and judgment. I try to understand trial and error. Really, my main concern is just having fun with all of it.

 

You mentioned you write a lot of songs about girls. Are you in a relationship right now?

I’m in a very, very monogamous relationship that’s been on and off for about five years, but for the last three years it’s been pretty hardcore.

 

Have you ever worried that settling down with somebody would affect your artistic output?

Oh god, I hope so, man. I don’t want to write any more songs about torrid relationships. I hope that, as I attain happiness and focus, it does translate in the music. Ultimately, I wanna make happy music. Let’s be real. It’s not self-serving to keep making fuckin’ angry music, especially when most of the anger is pointed inward or being projected onto people I care about. It’d be different if I was the kind of guy that was making records that were mad at the government, mad at Nike, mad at whatever. That’d be a different story. Then the anger would at least be serving the purpose of forcing people and fans to dialogue about what I’m talking about. But I don’t tend to make those songs. I get scared of sounding preachy, so I make songs that are closer to home. The revolution will not be televised because it’s invisible, because it’s inside of us. Those are the songs I make, and god knows I want some sort of resolution to my inner revolution. So I do hope that someday, people say we suck because we make happy music. I’m into that.

 

Everybody dreams of being successful in their respective fields, but when you started Rhymesayers 13 years ago, did you ever think it would get to this point?

I don’t know if I ever really forecasted. I’ve never been good at that whole “Where do you see yourself in five years?” thing, so I don’t know if I ever forecasted it. When I was really young, like 13 or 14, I thought I was gonna grow up and be LL Cool J. I thought I was gonna be famous with limos and groupies and fat dookie ropes and shit like that. But I think as time went on and I became content with my blue-collar career as a courier, I stopped having these champagne wishes and caviar dreams or whatever you call it. I started focusing more on just expression and not really caring where it went. So once it started going somewhere, I wasn’t really prepared for organized thought about that. I was just like “Well, I’m just gonna ride the roller coaster ’til the wheels fall off.” And I do think I’m still kind of in that mind-frame, only the difference is, now I’m looking at what I can do to make this so I don’t get fired yet. Not job security in the sense of money, but just, I enjoy this so much. How do I turn this into something that I can do for the rest of my life, even if it doesn’t mean rapping? Even if it means I’m managing another band or I’m the fuckin’ tour bus driver or whatever. How can I still apply myself as part of the machine that helps get out music that I believe in? And I think that’s kinda where I stand with Rhymesayers. Even when I wasn’t aware of it, subconsciously that’s been my motive with Rhymesayers – to play a role in making sure that there’s music out there that I believe in, even if it’s not my music, per se.

 

Phoenix and Minneapolis are roughly the same size. Do you think there really are that many more great MCs in the Twin Cities than other similar-sized areas?

No, I don’t think it has much to do with that. I mean, if we were going to take geography into consideration, I would think that the only difference between Minneapolis and Phoenix is that, when you’re in Phoenix, making trips to San Diego and LA is not that uncommon. Whereas when you’re in Minneapolis, there’s nowhere to trip to. Chicago is the closest, and it’s really not that often that people go to Chicago. So if we were to say what makes Minneapolis and Arizona different in the rap world, geographically, it’s that I think in Minneapolis, everything had to be self-taught, period. There was no mentorship. We weren’t that close to a place like LA where we could go watch some shows, go back home, take what we learned from watching those shows and apply it. We really had to depend on the very few artists that would come do shows here and depend on ourselves. So I really do think that the only difference between Minneapolis and Arizona is that in Minneapolis, there’s a couple of dudes who started doing this shit on their own and it kinda motivated a whole city to start doing it on their own. Whereas in Arizona, there are dudes there doing it on their own – I’m friends with some of them – but it hasn’t quite hit yet to where everybody believes that is the direction for them. There’s still a lot of people in Arizona that are probably hoping to be the next hot thing on a major label. I don’t know if we have that here anymore. When I was a kid, we all wanted that. We all wanted to make demos, send them to Def Jam and get signed. But by about ’95, we gave up on all that shit. And then by 2000, those of us that gave up on that shit inspired a whole new batch of kids. Then by 2005, there’s a whole new batch of kids. Now we’re on our third generation of DIY rap. That’s not to say Arizona doesn’t have that either. It’s just to say if Arizona’s doing that, maybe it was influenced by the Living Legends. Maybe it was influenced by how often the Legends came and did shows there and showed those kids that they could do it on their own. To be honest, if I had to pick a place to grow up, I almost think I would’ve preferred to grow up in Phoenix, because I feel like there might’ve been more opportunity for me to get out there at a younger age. People didn’t know who the fuck I was ’til I was 27. At that point, I was already too old to be a rapper.

 

What do you think will surprise people the most about the new album?

That’s a good question. We really actually put a lot of focus on trying to make sure that every single song was a surprise, in a sense. There’s maybe only one or two songs that people might hear as traditional Atmosphere songs. The majority of it was us really trying to go, “Well, without stepping outside of who we are, how can we take a risk?” I don’t like to step outside of who I am. I don’t like how it feels. It feels like you’re doing art for the sake of art, as opposed to trying to have a message or communication or trying to represent yourself. So I really kinda hope that there’s a lot of surprises on it. Even with the two songs that I would suggest are kind of standard Atmosphere songs, we tried to put surprises in them as well. In one of them, Tom Waits beat-boxes. It’s like, “What the fuck is that?” Even when I didn’t challenge myself as much on a particular song and just kinda wanted to tell a story, we challenged it by going “Well, I wonder what would happen if I asked Tom Waits to collaborate on here?” I would love to silently watch somebody’s reaction (while) listening to the record, because I think the faces they make and the eye rolling that they’ll do would be really fun to watch. I wanna believe that there’s a lot of left turns that you don’t see coming as you listen to it in its entirety.

 

So do you think it’ll be one of those albums that hits people immediately, or is it one that’s gonna have to grow on you?

I’ve never thought that anybody was gonna like any of our fuckin’ records, so I don’t know. I’m not sure how people are gonna take it. The great part is, when it comes to considering people appreciating it, I never have to do that. Ant, the guy that makes these songs with me, me and him, we’re kinda like-minded. We have a lot of things in common. We relate to a lot of the same stuff. So initially, when I make my music, it’s like he’s my tester. I test it on him. If it makes him laugh, if it makes him smile, if it makes him wince, then I know, okay, I hit my mark. That’s the mark I’m trying to hit. I’m trying to make music for myself, but I’ve gotta try it on somebody else so it’s not completely selfish. Beyond that, I don’t really worry about it. It’s the record label’s problem to try to get people to like the shit. It’s my problem just to make it, but as far as people liking it, I’m not sure. I do see this record as possibly risking my fan base, to an extent, but I think that part of my fan base appreciates the fact that I don’t mind doing that.

 

Ant has one of the most distinctive sounds in hip-hop. Can you talk about the process of creating a song with him? Do the beats or the lyrics come first?

With prior albums, he used to work on his time, I’d work on my time, and we’d get together and try to figure out how to mix the two. I’d go over there and I’d go “Hey, I’ve got these words. It’s about pseudo-intellectuals starting to question whether or not they’re going nuts.” And he’ll go “Oh, I’ve got this fuckin’ beat with a crazy guitar thing that makes me feel crazy. Here, try to rap it on this.” And I’ll try it and the moods match and we go “Sweet, there’s a song. It’s called ‘Smart Went Crazy.’” That’s how we used to do it. This record is the first time that we ever made it 100 percent collaborative, from scratch – beats and rhymes. I would sit over there. He would start making a beat. I would start to envision the story that I think goes along with that mood, and then I would start to write the story while he would start to fill in the blanks of the beat. So I believe this is the first time we’ve made a record where I actually hear the marriage between the beats and the lyrics 100 percent. There are plenty of older records where I could’ve taken the lyrics off of that beat and put it on any beat that was dark, and (Ant) could’ve taken me off of a dark beat he had and put any introspective rapper on top of it. I think this is the first time where it’s been like “Naw, this shit was customized.” These words and this music, they go together.

 

Is there any live band stuff on there?

Aside from drum programming, there are no samples on this record. There’s some stuff where we played a part of a record for the band and asked them to either replay it or rework it or at least just go for that mood. There are parts where we were like “This would be a great sample to use” and we would just look on the back of the record and find out it was played on a Jupiter or a Juno (synthesizer) and we would go and get the keyboard and then bring the keyboard in just so we could get the feeling of it. Then there’s some that are just straight-up jacks, where we just straight-up replay the shit. Then there’s a lot of shit where people just improvised and came up with cool sounds. Anyway, Ant sampled the band. We never did it the way rock bands do it, where the drummer lays down his part and then the bass player comes in and plays. It’s still samples, but all the samples come from the band. It’s like “Here, we just need you to play two bars of this bass line and then we’ll sample it and loop it. Here, we need you to play two bars of this keyboard part and then we’ll sample it and loop it.” Nobody can get me for samples. There are plenty of people who can accuse me of ripping off people, but that’s hip-hop.

 

On “Little Math You” (from last year’s free, internet-only release Strictly Leakage) you take a few swipes at gangsta rap. Do you think “conscious rap,” for lack of a better term, will eventually return to the mainstream?

Well, for starters, I disagree. I’m not taking swipes at gangsta rap. I’m taking swipes at the concept (that) anything that’s not gangster isn’t real. I’m throwing jabs at the idea of questioning authenticity, just because it’s become very common for street authentics to question the suburban authentics. I look at it like, this is all fuckin’ music. It’s for anybody to escape to. Suburban kids listen to 50 Cent when they’re on their lunch break so they don’t go in and stab their manager there at the fuckin’ Game Stop or wherever the fuck they work. So to me, everybody’s authentic, and that’s kinda what that song is about. It’s kinda sticking up for little Matthew from the suburbs because he’s just as authentic as the guy that carries a gun. Half these guys that talk about guns on their records, they’re not really fuckin’ crooks. They’re rappers. I know dope dealers. If them dudes were trying to rap, they’d make horrible dope dealers, and horrible rappers. Don’t spread your focus, man. Focus on what you’re good at. If you’re a good dope dealer, go be that. If you’re a good rapper, go be that. But don’t try to front and act like you’re good at both, ’cause you’re not.

 

In the early ’90s, it wasn’t uncommon for people to listen to NWA or Compton’s Most Wanted one minute and Poor Righteous Teachers or De La Soul the next. Why do you think there’s such a huge gap between fans of the two genres now?

It’s the cult of individuality, man. People have to assert their identities somehow, so they can fit in in some way. That’s kinda what happens when that shit advances. This is the advancement of individuality from where we were back then. Back then, it was individual enough just to love hip-hop, so you could love all of it, whereas now, hip-hop took over the world. So now it ain’t enough just to say “I love hip-hop.” It’s like “Oh yeah, well what kind of hip-hop do you like? ’Cause I gotta find out if me and you will get along. I’ve gotta assert my identity by being a backpacker. Oh, you like that thug shit? I don’t like that shit. Fuck that shit. It’s genocidal. It’s fuckin’ up my community.” Whereas the thug dude is like “Naw, man. I’m just fuckin’ kickin’ it and flowin’ over this beat. But I’m not gonna rap about some old bullshit I don’t know about. I’m gonna rap about the streets, ’cause that’s what I know about.” So it’s kinda like, what’s the difference? If a thug is not reading books by Marcus Garvey, why would you expect him to fuckin’ write conscious rap? If a conscious rapper ain’t out here out here on the street slingin’ heroin, why the fuck would you expect him to write thug rap? Everybody just needs to be okay with just (being themselves). But then it’s contradictory for me to say that, because I made that “Little Math You” song. But that song by no means is taking a shot at gangsta rappers. It’s taking a shot at anybody who questions the authenticity of anybody else. It’s kinda like “Who the fuck are you to judge another motherfucker who’s really just here to enjoy the music?” It’s mostly just taking a swipe at people who want to dis and separate the fan bases. To me, fans of music are just that. They’re there to enjoy the shit. They shouldn’t be forced to sit and think about the back-story of the rapper. I don’t give a fuck if the rapper’s been to jail. That ain’t got shit to do with whether or not he can rap. I don’t give a fuck if the rapper’s been to college. That ain’t got shit to do with whether or not he can rap. So that was kinda what that song was about. I probably just did a really poor job of communicating that. That’s kinda normal for me.

 

When you write really personal lyrics, fans sometimes have a tendency to feel like they know you. Have you had any issues with stalkers or overzealous fans?

“Stalker” is a pretty hardcore word. Nobody knows where I live or anything like that. But yeah, my old duplex that I used to live in – I moved about a year ago – I used to find crazy shit on the porch all the time from fans. But I don’t know if that was so much because of the rap thing or because I made myself available like that. I lived in the trendy neighborhood. I walked to all of the trendy bars in my neighborhood. So it’s like I put myself out there like that. It’s my own fault. I didn’t even have to be a rapper to obtain that. I think that happens to probably any random guys that hang at that fuckin’ bar and try to hang out with the chicks afterwards. I think that could’ve happened to anybody. But I used to get tons of weird shit on my porch, from beheaded dolls to just crazy letters, things of that nature. There’s some decent fan mail that comes from time to time to the Rhymesayers office. There’s one person in particular, actually, who sends me about three things a week and has been doing it for about three years. But for the most part, I think, if anything, the only real drawback to the personal connection that I have with a lot of my fans is how intense they take some of the stuff. I had a song back in the day called “Nothing But Sunshine” that was a story about me, the character, who had lost both of his parents at an early age. Since then, I’ve had tons of kids come up to me to tell me about how they relate because both of their parents died. For me to have to look them in the eye and explain to them how that didn’t really happen to me, it was a drag. It was a bummer. Here you are, thinking someone can actually relate to this tragedy you experienced, and it turns out that he was just trying to make a point. So it definitely made me take a stronger look at how I approach songwriting. I’ve got shit to communicate. I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings in the process anymore, and I think I didn’t spend enough time paying attention to that. I think that’s the one thing that I really take into consideration when it does have to do with the listener. If I offend you by speaking my mind, that’s one thing. I’ve got no problem with that. But if I offend you just arbitrarily, by saying something that, I guess, didn’t need to be said in order for me to make that point, I try to really be cautious. Right now, I look at songs like “How can you poke holes in it?” I look for the holes that can be poked in it and I try to make it so that the only holes you can poke in it are just sheer talent. If you want to poke holes in my talent, fine. If your opinion is our music sucks, fine. But other than that, I don’t want you to be able to poke holes in my ethics, in my morals, unless we just disagree. But I want to be able to stand proud for every single song that I put out now, and I can’t do that for some of the songs I’ve released in the past. I feel like some of the songs I’ve made in the past were very irresponsible of me, if that makes any sense. I don’t know if that’s got to do with living and learning, or maybe it’s just an age thing. My kid’s 13 now and he buys records, so maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling these responsibility things. Who knows what it is? But I just know it’s definitely there, and I’m definitely conscious of the fact that I try to stay responsible with what I’ve got to say now. In the past, I used to be like “I don’t care. This is my expression. I can say whatever the fuck I want.”

 

Well, as long as you don’t completely abandon those old, irresponsible songs and start rapping about Tibet, I think you’re okay.

Well, you know, I think we’re safe, ‘cause I’m not a fan of preachy rap. If I can rap about Tibet by telling a story about something that happened there but still manage to hide the morals in, like, Easter eggs, then I’m down. But hopefully, you’ll never hear me make a song called “Wear Your Seatbelt.”

 

What about the flip side? Has anyone ever gotten mad at you or threatened you with a lawsuit because they recognized that a song was about them?

No, no lawsuits. I mean, I’m sure I’ve hurt feelings, but I guess back then, I viewed it as fair trade. I didn’t think I ever just randomly lashed out to hurt feelings. I think if I hurt your feelings, it probably had something to do with the fact that me and you had a personal situation and we had that cycle with each other and we hurt each other. Even then, I tried not to make it obvious who I was talking about. I tried to keep everything ambiguous enough so that the person who hears it might know it’s about them, but their mom would never know it’s about them. I don’t even do that anymore either though, to be quite honest. I kind of grew weary of giving other people that much credit.

 

Ant never used to go on tour with you. What made him change his mind?

I told him he could quit his day job if he would just come out and do this. I should say “night job” though. He was a third-shift dude. Up until Ant toured with me, he was working third-shift as a janitor, just out of habit. He didn’t even need the money necessarily. It was just something for him to do, and it worked for him. So basically, I was like “Look, man, I can totally compensate you and pay you as much, if not more, to come out and tour.” When he came out and toured and realized that he was making, like, four times the amount that he was making janitoring, it was an easy choice – we’ll put it like that.

 

So do you have any big summer tour plans or festival dates?

Yeah, we go to Europe. Me and Brother Ali and Ant, the three of us, are gonna go to Europe. We put together a combined set, so it’s like an hour-and-a-half dinner with Ali, Slug and Ant. We’re gonna go to Europe and do festivals. We’re gonna run the festival circuit and do a bunch of club dates over there, pretty much all summer. We do a run, we come home for two weeks, then we go back and do another run. When we get back home from that in the fall, I go back out with Atmosphere.

 

You’ve gotta take that (Brother Ali and Atmosphere) show on the road here. That’d be awesome.

We’re gonna, but we’re gonna wait until both of us are done with our album cycles. In Europe, it makes sense, because we do well in Europe, but not so well that I could afford to bring the whole band like I do here. So rather than just me and Ant go and do the DJ/rap set – and Ali needs to hit his Europe market too – we thought (it) would be fun if we did this. The other thing is, in Europe, people over there, they get it. Over here, if me and Ali were to start doing that, people would immediately think we’re a group again. It’s the same thing that happened when me and Eyedea used to do it, the same thing that happened when me and Crescent Moon did it. It’s harder to show these people that this is just for fun – we’re not really a fucking group. In Europe, they get it because I think a lot of rap artist kinda do it like that over there. Aesop Rock goes over there and Mr. Lif is onstage with him. But over here, it somehow tends to confuse the kids. So we’re gonna wait until both of us are done with our records and then we’re gonna actually make a record together, and then we’re gonna do the States like that. You’re the first person I’ve told that to, actually.

 

Sweet. So that’s an exclusive scoop, huh?

There’s the exclusive scoop: me and Ali are making an album together, with Ant, and we’re gonna tour it. Very similar to how me and Murs did the Felt thing.

 

What I liked about the Paid Dues tour (with Murs) was, I wasn’t sure if it was just gonna be your Felt stuff, but I liked how you did a few Atmosphere songs and he did a few of his solo songs.

When we first went out, we intended on only doing Felt songs. It only took one show to see how dumb of an idea that was. (laughs) I’m not even lying, homie. It was like “Okaaaaay, these Felt songs just aren’t that good, are they? Alright, here, Murs, do your hits. Go!” That’s pretty much a great way to explain it. If me and Murs would’ve come out and just done Murs and Atmosphere songs, it would’ve been a little weirder. But since we had the Felt connection, people got it. That’s kinda what me and Ali are discussing. We wanna actually make a product to reinforce the tour, if that makes any sense. It’s a crazy way to do it, because usually, you make a record, and then you go out and tour it. Here, it’s like “Naw. We’re gonna make a tour. We need a record to reinforce that.” I see it as being fun, and a learning experience. We’ll probably make some mistakes, but I see it as being a learning experience, really.

 

So we probably won’t see the record for a couple years though.

No, no, no. We’re gonna try to make the record and tour it hopefully within a year from now. I’ll be running the Atmosphere cycle until the end of the year, so I wouldn’t suggest that anybody would see anything until early next year at the soonest. But I wouldn’t say a couple years. I can’t stop right now. I have to keep writing, I have to keep rapping. I’m having too much fun right now, so I’m gonna push this shit to just happen naturally. When we go to Europe to tour is probably when we’re gonna write it. Like I said, we have a couple of two-week breaks between that and then another one (before) I go back out with Atmosphere. That should be enough time to demo it out so that, presumably, sometime in December, we can actually realize the project and put it together. Who knows? Maybe a year from today.

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