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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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God Loves [Sl]ugly
Wednesday 12 June @ 13:01:35 |
 Interview by RJ Wilson
Atmosphere’s new release godLovesugly, is an incredible follow up to last year’s Lucy Ford album. 2002 finds producer Ant and rapper Slug still taking on life and love, but with a slightly older voice and more confident sounds. Atmosphere have taken Hip-Hop to a new level, with images and lyrics that explore the depths of relationships, life, and the meaning of it all in ways only so called “Emo” music used to. Sometimes compared to fellow Midwesterners Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, other times to Eminem, Slug avoids the thuggish attitude of the latter, and the overwhelming angst of the former to make Hip-Hop that pulls the heart strings and boggles the mind lyrically. Atmosphere have become favorites in the Underground Hip-Hop scene, bringing attention to a much overlooked scene here in the Cities. I sat down with Slug to talk about the new album, touring, and the possibility of a Metal/Hip-Hop Atmosphere crossover.
Atmosphere’s new release godLovesugly, is an incredible follow up to last year’s Lucy Ford album. 2002 finds producer Ant and rapper Slug still taking on life and love, but with a slightly older voice and more confident sounds. Atmosphere have taken Hip-Hop to a new level, with images and lyrics that explore the depths of relationships, life, and the meaning of it all in ways only so called “Emo” music used to. Sometimes compared to fellow Midwesterners Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, other times to Eminem, Slug avoids the thuggish attitude of the latter, and the overwhelming angst of the former to make Hip-Hop that pulls the heart strings and boggles the mind lyrically. Atmosphere have become favorites in the Underground Hip-Hop scene, bringing attention to a much overlooked scene here in the Cities. I sat down with Slug to talk about the new album, touring, and the possibility of a Metal/Hip-Hop Atmosphere crossover.
Pulse: In Spin, there’s this “On the Verge” thing, and you’re right next to Bright Eyes. Do you know Bright Eyes?
Slug: I didn’t until I saw that, and I went out and bought Fevers and Mirrors. It was all right. I wasn’t really into dudes voice that much so it was hard to listen to what he was saying, ‘cause his voice didn’t really catch me right. I respect him though ‘cause everybody likes him.
P: What do you think of his lyrics?
S: I really didn’t go into it ‘cause his voice turned me off, so I never really got into listening to exactly what he was saying. I guess that kinda sucks for me, ‘cause I’m obviously one of those people that has an annoying voice, a lot of people listen and go “I like what he’s got to say.” When I’m the kind of person that if I can’t stand your voice, I’m not going to listen. It’s not really fair.
P: What do you think of the state of local hip-hop and the murmur all around. I go to the West Coast and people there have heard of you guys. It’s word of mouth thing, people bringing it back. Where do think it’s going, what could happen here. It has the potential to explode. What do you think about that?
S: I think based off of a few beacons of light here, theres about 10 people here doing stuff and doing it well, not even just rapping, but just within rapping, DJing, graffiti and all that kind of stuff. I know when I go places, I hear kids ask about our city. I think that’s weird, you know, ‘cause I never would have thought that people would have thought of this place as being some place that’s cool to be if you’re into this kinda stuff. I think it’s pretty dope. Anything that makes our city look cool is cool to me, ‘cause I live here and I want everybody to think that I’m ultra %@!#$&ing cool.
P: You wanna represent?
S: No, I don’t want to represent. That’s selfish. I wanna be one of those cool kids, but I wanna be one of the cool ones, so as long as people think our city’s cool, we all got points. So if any of us do anything, it’s like, not only did they do something, there from Minneapolis. I don’t know—I don’t know if kids take the place too serious, I’m just kinda talkin’ out my ass, freestyling.
P: Who else in town do you dig, but not the usual suspects we always hear about?
S: Umm. That’s a good question. I guess I can only base it off random shows I see and stuff like that. I definitely think there are people here that are really cool. Like that kid Tokey who raps with the C.O.R.E. is really dope. There’s a group called the Swiss Army that I’ve seen play a couple of times, I think they’re pretty fresh. Umm. I don’t know. Me. I’m really good. Never actually seen myself play.
P: You’ve never seen a video of yourself playing?
S: Yeah, I guess I’ve seen that. Actually, I kinda suck. I’m really cute though, so %@!#$& it.
P: What do think of the Eminem comparison.
S: I guess we’re comparable, based of off we’re both rappers. I mean were both from the Midwest. I guess we both tell a lot of stories. I don’t mind being compared to him. I think he’s pretty dope. He’s good at what he does and it doesn’t really make me cringe when people compare us. But at the same time that really works for so much that it doesn’t really matter. I don’t notice it too often. I never really thought of myself as having an “I don’t give a %@!#$&” attitude. So I don’t know what I think. What do you think? Is that your sucker?
P: No, not my sucker.
S: What do you think?
P: I don’t know—I’m here to ask the questions. I don’t know Eminem enough, but I guess people don’t know how to put you in a box, ‘cause you’re white, and your from the Midwest and it’s such an unusual thing that that’s the first thing they draw off of.
S: I guess you could draw those comparisons, but there are too many white rappers out now to even do that anymore. It used to be that there were a couple of white rappers; there’d be these token white rappers that it was ok for the white kids to like. Kids would get into House of Pain and Cypress Hill cause of the pot thing, but they really didn’t get into KRS-One and %@!#$& like that. I guess now it’s gone beyond that. You don’t compare a Dose One to Eminem, you know what I mean? It’s completely different %@!#$& going on. I think Eminem is more comparable to Snoop Dog or Tupac. I don’t even come close to that.
P: Tell me a little bit about the history of the Rhymesayers.
S: We started in 1949, in a basement not far from where we sit, actually. Back before Hum’s was a liquor store, it was a rec center for runaways. There was this lady there named Marbles and she used to take in a lot of runaways. We were all there eating their food and decided to start a movement to talk kids out of sagging their pants anymore, ‘cause it’s bad for their lower backs. You don’t want to talk about the history of the RhymeSayers, every paper in this city has written about that and blah, blah, blah.
P: Tell me about touring Japan.
S: That was really fresh, ‘cause it was Japan, you have no idea what anyone is saying ever. You have to walk around and smile a lot, and have a good time. It was really easy to have fun, ‘cause you couldn’t tell who was pissed off and who wasn’t. Nobody’s vibe was intruding on your own: ‘cause you didn’t know what they were saying, it didn’t matter. Everybody there was really respectful, and I really was into that. Nobody treated us like tourists. Maybe it was obvious that we couldn’t afford to go to Japan for tourism, maybe they could tell by what we looked that that we were there for a reason. We probably looked like a band. Everyone there was really respectful, really nice. Can’t really say I toured it. We where there for 5 days.
P: Who’d you play with?
S: One night with AC Alone and Two-Mex. Mostly a lot of West Coast underground. The next night it was like the living legends. A lot of names that aren’t really big, but big enough for the Japanese underground kids to know about it. Those dudes study so much. It amazed me that they were so into it. Its like a lot of them learn English form listening to Hip-Hop. It’s pretty cool.
P: The original press copies of godLovesugly had some stuff on it to prevent people from putting it up on the Internet. It makes me think that people overseas might only hear you guys by getting a couple things off the web. How do you feel about that?
S: We didn’t do it to deter it from going up on Audiogalaxy, we did it to be dickheads. There’s nothing you can do. As soon as the press CDs and promos go out, it’s going to wind up as some file for people to download. It’s going to happen anyway, so we figured, if it’s going to wind up there anyway, we might as well %@!#$& with it a little bit. So we had some girl talk %@!#$& about people who download music on top of the music. I can’t have feelings about it. I can have an opinion about it, but who cares. It is what it is and you’ve got to deal with it as how it is. You can’t really do anything about it, we decided to have some fun with it. I am against people downloading people’s albums. I think for promotional sake it’s beautiful if some kid wants to put up three of my songs and people can download those, and hopefully they’ll choose three of the best ones. I can’t complain, ‘cause so many people found out about me through the internet, but at the same time, it’s not really about getting exposed to artists, as a lot of people say. No, it’s about money. People download full records and get the art so they don’t have to spend the money on the music. Which is cool, ‘cause I’m sure people got better stuff to spend their money on. It’s no different than when I would dub something off a record. My friend had the record. You buy that one, Ill buy this one, then Ill dub yours you dub mine. It’s a matter of your not sharing this in the sense of how, in theory, it should be shared. If you gotta friend, and you’re turning him on to this stuff, and he’s like “Yo, can I get a copy of this?” it’s kinda like smoking pot with him. Whereas, just random people can go find whatever they want from people they don’t even know, there’s nothing being put into it. If you’re dubbing my %@!#$& for your boys, that’s cool. ‘cause right there you’re letting them know that you feel this way about this. I mean there’s a lot more than me being able to go into a library and pick out five records and take them home. I don’t know.
P: What’s your favorite place to play?
S: I’d probably have to say Japan. It was so much more than just going there for a show. We got to sit there for a couple of days. We got to take in nowhere near enough. We all left feeling like we didn’t finish our plate, which just makes you hungry for more. The whole experience was surreal. It was like a drug. I’d love to get high on that again. Otherwise, there are certain cities that have always been good to me that I love going to play. I like playing here the most. Afterwards I can go home to my bed and have sex with my girlfriend.
P: What were you listening to growing up?
S: Pretty much any rap album that came out, I owned, and if I didn’t own it, I dubbed it. If it was good enough that I wanted it I would own it. I’ve been a record junkie forever. I didn’t really start buying stuff outside of rap till five or six years ago.
P: You grew up listening to hip-hop?
S: Yeah. I had this pothead friend who tried to get me into Jane’s Addiction and Rage Against The Machine. That was cool to listen to when I was smoking his weed, but I never really got into buying other stuff until I started working at the Fetus, and starting getting turned on to lots of %@!#$& and starting getting promos, which got me into this band or that band. Now I buy anything. I’ll buy something if the cover art is good. I still spend way too much money on records. I don’t own a car ‘cause I buy records.
P: What got you into rap when you were a kid?
S: Age and my friends. The people I was surrounded by at just the right time. My dad. When I first starting hearing it, I didn’t know it was hip-hop. I was just a kid. To me it was just more of the %@!#$& my dad listened to. It was like Parliament or Earth, Wind, and Fire. Except these guys were singing differently. It wasn’t until early Run DMC that I realized that this was different. These people are talking to me, about me, for me, whatever the %@!#$& you want to call it, but this wasn’t my dad’s music. This wasn’t an extension of his collection. This was %@!#$& he couldn’t understand. He still likes better hip-hop. I had him listening to X-Clan and %@!#$& like that and he was into a lot of stuff.
P: What was it like opening for Prince?
S: I didn’t really open for Prince. Me and these guys used to do this thing at this bar called the Front. We used to do this Freeloaded Wednesday over there, just freestyling on Wednesdays with bands. Bands would improv, we would improv. One night me and Shaka from the Micronauts were over there just rapping with the band when Prince showed up with Robin Robinson, and decided to jump up there on the piano and sit in with us and play. So I didn’t really open for him, I got to play with him.
P: What was that like?
S: It’s hard to rap over somebody who plays the piano like it’s a vocalist. So for the most part, I think the reason we rapped was so that we could say we rapped with him. Honestly, we probably should have shut up and let him play; we were kinda being on some self %@!#$& at the moment. I just put that in my bio ‘cause it looks cool.
P: Who’s Lucy?
S: Lucy was Marbles daughter.
P: I see where this is going.
S: Super hot chick, lot of issues though. You gotta imagine. Marbles was a professional groupie. Any bands that came to town, Marbles would take them home. So being the daughter of a professional groupie probably is enough to %@!#$& up anybody’s head and give them some issues.
P: Tell me about the new album. How long did it take you to do it?
S: I have no idea. The way we make records is so different. There’s songs on there born on the moment of making the album. There’s songs on there that are two to three years old. Me and Ant just make stuff, and then go, “ Hey, lets compile an album out of some of this %@!#$&”. We just pick the songs that we feel go together, and make it into a full record. In the studio, recreating the album probably took about a month.
P: What are you going to New York for?
S: Were doing a string of release parties, starting on Monday. Two shows in New York, one in San Francisco, two in LA, then we come back here for one, then we go to Chicago for one.
P: What’s your feeling if majors come knocking and you get some offers. You know, someone who wants to take you to the next level. What’s your take on that?
S: I want people to come to the region and look for artists. I think there’s kids here that, if they had the opportunity to, A: they would and B: if they had the opportunity to they could really make some quality %@!#$& for a major. For myself, for all purposes, I’m pretty cool with how things are. Like it’s still a continual climb. Every record, every tour, is moving upwards for me, so I’m not really desperate to get a big advance. I think by the time I have a large audience, I’ll be practiced and good enough to be what a large audience needs, as opposed to throwing me out there as is on some make-or-break %@!#$&. It doesn’t really make sense to me anymore at this point. At 22 or something dumb like that, yeah I would have done it.
P: How old are you?
S: 29, 38, 12. B6 B6, you sank my battleship. I’m not stupid. If somebody offered me stupid money, and the situation was right and I knew I could pimp them out, I would do it. But it’s the same old story. If I’m going to get pimped, I also want to pimp. I’m in no rush to do it. I’ve become friends with so many A&R people, who I’ve actually become ‘friends-with-friends’ with. Most of them genuinely understand where I’m at and don’t even do the pressure thing they used to do. I instead just go eat dinner and chill. It’s like, everybody knows there’s a few of us who’ve managed to get where we’ve gotten, and are pretty happy with where we’re going, you know? Two years from now, when I’m screaming broke and can’t afford the cost of living, yea I’ll put together some rock and roll kids and do some Limp Bizkit %@!#$&.
D.A.M.F. and RhymeSayers Entertainment present the ATMOSPHERE “God Loves Ugly” Release Party with live performances by ATMOSPHERE (Slug + Mr. Dibbs + Crescent Moon), LOS NATIVOS, BROTHER ALI, OLIVER HART (Eyedea), MUSAB, THE OPUS, and guests DEEJAYBIRD and DJ K-SALAAM, and hosted by BROTHER ALI and I SELF
Sunday, June 16th, 2002 First Avenue Mainroom $12.00 advance/$15.00 doors 5:00pm Doors ALL AGES
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