I started to get the feeling that Slug was feeling put upon lately. Just look at the cover of the last Atmosphere album. There he sat, mohawked head in hand looking haggard. Plus they named it You Can’t Believe How Much Fun We’re Having, a backhanded way of saying they weren’t having any. Dude was stressed and I understand why. He had to please the grizzled backpackers who hold onto Rhymesayers as one of the last of a near extinct Indie-Hop breed. He had to please the ladies who pack his shows looking to catch any cigarette butts he might flick into the crowd. And he had to please the hip-hop loving kid in his heart who’s gotten everything he dreamed of from a music game that he now knows is totally rigged. Sisyphus always gets tired of rolling his bolder.
Thats why “Sunshine”, off of the Sad Clown Bad Summer 9 CD, is such a relief. He’s not pushing so hard this time around, and dare I say he sounds relaxed. With the next Atmosphere album titled When Life Gives You Lemons… it’s like they’ve found a little sweetness beneath all the bitter. Slug starts the track with a nasty hangover but stumbles his way into appreciating a summer day regardless. At one point he comes across a bike and even though “The brakes are broken that’s alright/ The tires got air and the chain seems tight”. Even Ant backs off from his usual soul sample funk workout and lets a gentle breeze twinkle his ivories instead. Maybe it’s seasonal affective disorder but the sunlight has done them both some good.
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I’m a huge Atmosphere fan (thanks to you, actually)…I feel like around the first or second Felt album, Ant hit a renaissance with his beat-making where they got denser and more layered. A lot of that is the soul-sampling that has become his trademark lately. I honestly think that the last Atmosphere album and the most recent Brother Ali one prove that he is the best producer working in hip-hop today. He manages to harness the noise though…layering without ever sounding over-produced. This song kind of seems like a step back in a sense to me in that respect, but I agree that it is nice to here him take a step back and go for the “less is more” approach.
As far as Slug – and Atmosphere as a group – I think it’s ironic that the album with the title that is the most overtly begrudging towards the music industry and how it has shaped their careers was the one with the most critical success since Lucy Ford. But unlike Lucy Ford, it was also their biggest crossover in terms of mainstream appeal, with songs even popping up in basketball apparel commercials (AND-1?).
How do you reconcile that as artists? It’s like Bowfinger winning the best picture Oscar. In the end, I think whatever they throw at me I will love and I do agree that it’s nice to hear Slug lose the edge a bit and appreciate some of the smaller things that may have escaped him during his drunken binges of emo-torment introspection.
Not quite sure where I’m going with this, but I gotta think that they weren’t 100% serious with the title of You Can’t Imagine…maybe they really are secretly having a lot of fun despite all the bullshit in hip-hop today. I hope so because at this point, it’s a little like when Eminem says “They say I can’t rap about being broke no more…”. Slug and Ant are cutting straight to the fresh squeezed lemonade these days…as industry vets, hopefully they’re just sharing a little inspiration for those still trying to find some halfway decent lemons.