As Atmosphere prepare to hit Europe for the latest leg of their never-ending tour, we speak to Slug about everything from Mi Vida Local to Dynospectrum and movies to Brexit. Words by Gingerslim.
Thanks for speaking with me, man. How’s everything with you?
I’m good, man, I’m good. I get up early to take the kid to school and sometimes I go back to sleep, sometimes I don’t. Today I didn’t and I’m feeling it right now. We were up late last night working on some music and I forgot that I had press today, so I was thinking I could grab some more sleep after I took the kid to school but then when I was driving back this morning I checked my calendar and I was like “Oh fuck!”. So here I am, all coffee’d up.
You released your latest album in October, Mi Vida Local. For those who may not have heard it yet, can you give us a bit of a breakdown? Has there been much progression from Fishing Blues?
You know, I don’t know if I’m in a position to answer that. There’s that bumper sticker that says all art is subjective and I think that the last opinion we should ever listen to about a piece of art, is the person who made it. I can tell you what certain songs are about – if I know – or I can tell you what I was thinking at the time, or what I was doing, but I don’t know if this record is any good, or if it’s any different. In my world it’s different, due to the fact it represents where I am right now.
Fishing Blues, or Southsiders, or Family Sign, they’re all kinda like snapshots of where I’m at in that moment. Where as if you were to try to hold my life up next to the person who made Family Sign, or Lemons right now, well my life has altered, it’s changed, it’s evolved since then; I dunno, however you want to word it, but it’s changed. Every two or three years we adapt to what’s been thrown at us. This record is made by the same guy who made You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having, but that guy is living in different circumstances, there’s a different climate going on, you know what I mean? So these things all kinda shape whatever the fuck it is that I’m juggling, or that I’m dealing with, or struggling with in that moment and this record is a snapshot of that. So in my head, if I was my own therapist, I think this record represents a certain kind of frustration or confusion, but different to the one I was feeling 10 years ago, it’s coming from a different perspective. Now I have more children so I have more worry about things that maybe aren’t quite so insular, like the world is steadily flying towards its destruction you know?
These types of things inform the writing on this album, where as lets say 10 years ago, the things that informed the writing and the music then, might have come from the place of a person who was far more concerned about himself, or about the moments. Now I’m looking at my surroundings and I’m giving less of a fuck about the things inside my immediate area, with more concern about things that are out of my control. And that’s a weird place to be cos you’re not supposed to give a shit about things that are out of your control, but yet here I go.
It must come with the territory, as you said you became a father so that will increase your worries.
Sure, but even if you take fatherhood out of the equation, I find myself thinking about things like those reports you read that say things like “we have this much time to change our ways before we cross the tipping point and face mass extinction” and you’re like well what do I envision as a perfect resolutions to that? Because I don’t necessarily believe we’re going to change, I want to but I honestly don’t think humanity has the fucking strength to make the changes that are needed. So with that said, how do I want to see shit end? What I envision is that when people realise there is going to be extinction, they’re going to lose their shit and start doing a lot of bad stuff. But I don’t want to see that happen, so how about we blow this fucking place up? Let’s all die at once, let’s have a mass suicide and blow it up. Actually no, suicide is the wrong word because none of us want to be the one to end it, but to achieve suicide you kinda have to do it yourself so let’s just set a time-bomb. I don’t have to worry about my kids starving, or burning to death, they don’t have to be sad about me dying first; I don’t have to worry about you, or my friends, we can all just fucking go and then it’s done. But what kind of fucking depression is that?! Where am I? What the fuck is going on when that’s my fantasy? It’s like wow, I’ve come a long way in 10 years! [laughs]
And do you think you’ll find a way to come to terms with that?
I mean here’s the best part, I have come to terms with it cos at the end of the day I know that that fantasy is so far-fetched; it’s not a rational reality, it’s more like a movie that I haven’t seen yet, but it’s in my head. In real terms I just want to try to make life as fun as possible for the people that I care about – my family, my friends – I just want everybody to have a good time. That other shit is just something I would talk to my therapist about. The real world and how I really see things, is that I’m trying to learn to be less susceptible to other people’s problems and frustrations, and more available as a conduit to spread hope to people who are feeling pain or frustration, as opposed to being affected by their pain and frustration. I want to try to be an energy that can add a bit of good feeling to the people that I can reach.
Luckily I have a good job for that, I’m a musician, and in a weird way I’m thankful that I never became super famous in the sense of having to figure out how to communicate to millions of people because that’s insane. Instead I get to be in my lane and communicate with the people who have figured out how to interpret me, so that I don’t have to be careful of how I communicate. I can do it how I feel, I can keep it as raw as I want without having to worry about ‘hurting people’, or backlash, or being problematic. I can be problematic if I fucking want. Now what does that mean? I’m not a very problematic person, but I get to be who I am and who I want, and people allow that, they make room for me to be that, so I’m kind of in the perfect situation. Cos my bills are paid, my family’s got food, so that’s where I think well what I can do to focus on people who maybe don’t have that; I mean obviously I can’t pay everybody’s rent for them, but maybe I can just give them a little something to listen to while they’re self-medicating and trying to escape the day-to-day problems that they have.
I mean that’s kinda what got me into your music, back in the Lucy Ford days because it just felt accessible and relatable.
I guess maybe now I’m finally embracing that, because when you got into that I didn’t want to be accessible, I didn’t want to be the guy that people went to to escape – I just wanted to be a fucking dope MC, you know what I mean? No one ever gave me the ribbon that I wanted, that first place ribbon, they gave me this different type of ribbon and I was very reluctant for a long time. I think by the time I first met you (2008), I was finally embracing it and realizing that I had just been blind, that that’s what I had been doing this whole time. But I think that’s the big joke. You receive a place to stand and it’s always the right spot, the place that’s been held for us for each individual to stand, it’s exactly right. We all walk around and try not to stand there because we’re humans, we don’t like authority or being told what to do; so even when fate is the authority, or the world’s energy is the authority, we still try to push back on it because we know that authority also means dependency, you know.
Now talking about the album, there are a few guest spots on there that piqued my interest, in particular Dynospectrum. What prompted you to reunite for the Randy Mosh track?
Well people were in communication already cos the label were reissuing the Dynospectrum album. Kevin Beacham, who I guess you could say was one of the main facilitators at the label, was reaching out to all of us trying to get photos, lyrics and things like that that he could use for the campaign. So in the process of that we were all talking anyway and I’d flown out to Arizona not long before that where I got to hang out with Gene Pool (Swift), me and Musab talk on a regular basis, me and Chaka (I Self Devine) we get together sometimes and look through records. It was like an organic moment where all four of us were talking and it’s not like we ever stopped talking intentionally, but we all got older, had kids and different lives etc.
So in the midst of all this I’d been looking at some of the beats Ant gave me and there were a couple that reminded me of Dynospectrum beats, so I reached out to everyone to see if they’d like to make a song and they all agreed. I was going to send them a couple of beats but I sent them one first and everyone wrote to it immediately. Like I sent it to them and later that same night Gene Pool sent me back two different verses! So I was like oh fuck, well here we go then and once it started it was real easy, but then the question was – shall we make more? And the answer was, well yeah we probably should but we also know how hard to it get just me and Murs together to make a whole album, so to get the four of us together would be hard work, we’ve got to keep it organic. So if it happens, it happens but I don’t want to push it, or pressure it, because what are we really making then?
The thing that was special about the Dynospectrum album for me was how effortlessly it came together, it basically wrote itself. I’d be at the studio making Atmosphere stuff, then I’d hang out with Musab while he was making his stuff and then Chaka would show up, so somebody suggested we get together and write a song. That’s how the first album was built. I don’t want to use the mail order system to make a whole new album. If all four of us are in the same city, or on the same stage, then that’s how I would like to see the second one get made.
Now with artists like deM atlaS and The Lioness, did you have a plan to work with them on the album before you started making it, or did the idea only emerge as certain tracks were made that you thought they would sound good on?
I knew that I wanted to work with both of them and I knew that I wanted to take both of them on tour. In fact they both did a short tour with us last year through the mountains and when that happened I knew I wanted to make a song with these guys, I respond so well to both their energies. People tend to have different opinions of me, some people think I’m a sweetheart, other people think I’m an asshole and the truth is I’m both. I’m an empath, so I feel what people are feeling and I reflect that. In that sense, the energies that deM atlaS and Lioness both give, bring out the best version of me; I like who I am when I’m around them. I love the person that they pull out of me, it’s someone I don’t get to see that often. It’s almost as if they remind me of what it’s like to know what’s behind the curtain, you know? I become curious when I’m around them, I become excited about shit again. Like “Oh fuck look at that squirrel!”, but I don’t normally notice a squirrel.
So yeah I wanted to do another tour with them and then I thought I should do a song with them, so we have something to perform. And I wasn’t necessarily interested in making a song to put on the album at the time, I just wanted to make a song so that we can all get on stage together at the same time. But then we made the song and it came out so good that we decided we wanted to put it on the album. There’s also another gentleman on there called Cashanova. He was the last one to come on board cos I needed a chorus for the song and I tapped him for the same reasons, because he’s another one whose energy is so beautiful that when I’m around him I feel beautiful, so I wanted him on the song as well.
Now by my count this is your seventh or eighth Atmosphere album. Do you guys ever find it harder to get things moving nowadays when it comes to starting a new project?
The hardest part is finding the time. We tour a lot still, plus me and Anthony both have families, children and so the hardest part is pulling ourselves away from other aspects of life, to make sure we’re still focused on creating projects. Making songs is easy, I make songs all the time, but when I have to focus my efforts and the material into some sort of galvanised movement like making an album, that’s the part that can be difficult.
I don’t like to make songs that sound all over the place; I made an album once where the songs were all over the place and to this day it is my least favorite album, I don’t ever want to make an album like that again. So I’m very intentional about the albums, I want them to have an overall meaning or an overall theme, something that I’m trying to communicate and that’s the part that can be difficult. Because it’s more than just sitting down and writing to a beat, it actually requires me to feel a certain way, to take a sort of temperature of where I’m at in my life right now. So in that way it’s not just a fucking mismatched plaid jacket, I don’t want to give people a plaid jacket, I want the jacket to look good [laughs].
Now I think it’s Rhymesayers Entertainment’s 23rd year as a label…
Holy shit!
I know right? Did you ever envision it getting to be this strong, in terms of its roster and its influence, when you started it was back when?
Absolutely not. You know when we started it, it was out of necessity. No other labels cared about rappers from Minneapolis, so we started our own label and when we did, I don’t think we even considered that the music would get past the borders of our state, much less worldwide. So no I didn’t envision it, but I don’t know if everyone working on it at the time would agree. Maybe Siddiq did have this grand goal of being able to do these things. And that’s not because I didn’t want things to get this big, I just never could have envisioned it. In fact if I ever did envision it, I probably did so as more of a naive or ignorant person – like “Oh this is going to be like Wu Tang, or this is going to be like Aftermath”; there’s no way I could’ve ever imagined it being what it really is, which is a very simple and humble situation that received the resources it needed to extend its wings.
And do you remember a point along the way where you realized that it actually was going to turn into something special?
I don’t think there was ever a single point, more like a series of little things here and there. Like when I finally met Open Mike Eagle, who I’d been a fan of and I realized he was aware of us, or when I finally met Aceyalone and realized he knew who Atmosphere was. It was one of those things where I’d come across people who I’m a fan of and realized that they’d been listening to my music for 15 years. Or someone would tell us they’d been really influenced by the things we’d been doing, those are the kind of things that blow me away the most. From my perspective I’m still sort of the guy from Minneapolis who’s trying to find my way through it and make it look easy, so I don’t always see the reverberations that it creates.
Now you mentioned earlier about how much touring you guys do and have done since the beginning. Do you think success would have been harder to come by if you didn’t get yourselves out there that much?
I do, yeah. I think touring was a huge part of the equation of how this became what it is, because we didn’t necessarily have the resources or the connections. The thing is as far as the music industry goes, I don’t have those connections, I don’t know any A&R people at labels. I made such an identity of saying fuck record labels, that record labels basically said well fuck you too, you know what I mean? So I never made friends with any of those kind of people – I don’t know the people who run the radio industry, I don’t know the people who run the video industry. So what I did instead was I got to know other bands and I got to know some booking agents, so I just stayed on the road and I connected with people one at a time. You know I think that if you were to poll our fan base and ask them how they first heard about Atmosphere, the majority would say word of mouth. That word of mouth came from people sharing our music, or going to our shows and telling people about them afterwards.
So a lot of our connections were personal, it wasn’t like they heard us on the radio and then went to look us up cos they liked our music. And so yeah, I do think touring played a huge part in spreading the word about who we are, as well as making us accessible cos we weren’t accessible like some of our peers were. We weren’t on MTV a lot, I mean towards the end we were featured here and there, but we never figured out how to break into MTV and give them the videos that they wanted to show – our videos were too lo-fi, with too much art from my own head.
Now sticking with touring, I know you guys are coming to Europe again in April, including London. Is it a very different experience when you’re touring over here, compared to back home?
There’s a huge difference in as much as in the UK territory, the European territory, we have even less connections there so it’s a smaller market for us. So you know, I get less PR over there, less press, so it’s a harder marketplace. I can’t just hop in a car and drive to Bristol, but I can hop in a car and drive to Tucson if I want to, or I can hop on a plane and be in New York in two hours. So it was easier for me to grown an audience here because of their easier accessibility to me. It’s been a lot more harder with Europe because it’s a lot more expensive to get there and then when I get there, there aren’t as many resources that I can accumulate. Our shows over there – well you’ve seen them – they’re not as big as they are over here. So we get there whenever we can and try to stay there as long we can, but I know that when I leave I’m not going to be back for a year to a year and a half, maybe two years, and so the momentum starts to slow down.
What I really appreciate about that though is that we’re not trendy over there. You know we’ve gone through phases here where it’s been cool to like Atmosphere, or it’s been cool to not like Atmosphere, then it was cool to like us again and so on and so forth. But in Europe, if you like us, it’s because there is a real solid connection between you and our music. So that means our shows are full of people that fucking sing along to every song, not just the five big ones. You know over here there are people at the shows who know the words to like Sunshine and Yesterday, but over in Europe you’ve got people asking for us to play songs like Bleed Slow and shit; it’s like fuck I don’t even know the words to that song.
I know you’re in the midst of your American tour at the moment and then obviously you’ve got Europe after, but what’s next after all that’s died down?
That’s a good question. We’re making more music currently, just because why wouldn’t we? I’ve been working on a few other things too… in fact yeah here’s something that I’ve not mentioned to anybody yet, but me and Anthony went out to Colorado to make a cameo appearance in a movie which looks like it could be quite exciting. It’s basically another Hunter S Thompson film that’s coming out, like a prequel to Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Just like the other Hunter S Thompson films that came out, they had cameos from loads of people and so one of the producers basically reached out to me and asked if we wanted a short scene in the film, and I was like “Fuck yeah!” [laughs].
So we flew out to Colorado and we played a couple of hippies in this scene, which is super cool and I’m really hoping they don’t cut it, so I probably shouldn’t talk about it too much cos I don’t want to jinx it! It only took like an hour to shoot our bit, so we were there hanging around for a couple of days and I saw other scenes that they were shooting and it looks like fucking fire, dude. I’m excited for these guys and I think it’s super dope that they asked us to be involved.
Yeah that’s really good, man. And I can totally picture you guys in that role.
[laughs]
And is film something you’ve ever thought about trying to get into before this?
I always wanted to, but I was too scared to. When I was in high school I took the typical public school style acting classes, so it didn’t get too deep or too heavy. But we wrote our own plays, then acted them and produced them, and it was always a lot of fun but I just never thought I’m that good at it. Like even watching our own music videos, I always feel like I look uncomfortable cos I’m not very good in front of the camera. So I just don’t feel like I have a lot of optimism about being able to do this shit. But if you ask me to come and do it, then I’ll fucking come and give it a try!
That’s a good outlook, man. Well that’s it from me, but thank you for taking the time to speak with me and I’ll see you at your UK show.
Well make sure you hit me up first and I’ll get you credentials, then you won’t have to pay. Cos shit’s expensive over there!
Yeah trust me, man. And it’s only getting worse. I don’t want to mention the B word, but yeah Brexit is going to fuck us up.
It’s crazy to me, I couldn’t believe that shit happened. I mean obviously I don’t live there so I don’t pretend to understand everything that matters, but I was still very… surprised [laughs].
I think a lot of us were too and now it’s just a big mess. But anyway it was great talking to you, man. Take care and we’ll speak again soon.
You too, man. Have a great evening. Peace.
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Mi Vida Local is out now on Rhymesayers Entertainment – get it here. Atmosphere hit Europe this April on these dates. Follow Slug on Twitter.
Gingerslim has been a hip-hop fan since 1994 and has written for various blogs and websites since around 2006. During that time he has contributed to style43, Think Zebra, Headsknow and Front Magazine. His main interests in rap are UK hip-hop and the underground movement in America, with a focus on Rhymesayers Entertainment and the once mighty Def Jux label. He lives in Bristol and has a beard. All other details are sketchy at best. Follow him here.