Style 43

Eleven years after becoming the first hip-hop act to put the Twin Cities on the map, Atmosphere has grown into one of the most accomplished MC/producer duos around. Between Slug and Ant, they’ve released six albums, 11 Sad Clown tour albums and various side-projects like Felt — amounting in well over a million units sold. And along the way have performed to sold-out crowds everywhere from modest sized venues in their hometown to colossal festivals in Japan.

Since releasing their 1997 debut, Overcast!, Ant’s ASR-born melodic beats and Slug’s open book and observational style of rapping continues to evolve into hip-hop that’s more honest — more textured. And the praise for these Rhymesayers pioneers hasn’t stopped flowing in.

With exactly two months to go until the release of their latest album, Underground Hip Hops finest kindly gave Style43 not only this interview, but an entire day to chill with them in London to hear the new record get its first spin on UK soil.

Needless to say, it sounds dope.

Slug, You said in an interview at the start of 2007 that it would be a quiet year for Atmosphere to concentrate on home & families yet you ended up releasing 3 more Sad Clown EP’s, was the time spent a direct influence to these records?

Slug: Probably, not consciously. I didn’t intend for that time to influence the records, but more than likely yeah, there is kinda no way around that. That’s the thing about Atmosphere, our whole career has been really fortunate in the sense that I get to be who I am on the records, so the time that’s spent in my life doing other stuff always ends up effecting what the records are about. As far as the sound, its kind of similar. You can hear that Ant has been touring with us and that our bond has gotten stronger in the new record & the Sad Clown’s. I can’t say if it was directly an influence. No more than whatever is going on in our lives as that time.

What do you think it is about the Mid-West that produces a seemingly endless stream of top-notch artists?

Slug: That’s in the eye of the beholder. For instance, you appreciate a lot of the artists coming out of there, and all of us are connected in a certain way. We didn’t grow up in an environment where certain things influenced us as much because to be honest, it would have required a lot of hard work and effort for me to have been a really successful drug dealer or mugger or whatever, because the areas we live in are not as well set up for that like the East or West coasts are. I hear that influence in a lot of the music coming out of there but that environment isn’t as open to us.

That environment never came and embraced me and said “You’re gonna sell drugs.” you know, it just wasn’t an option for me. And so I think that’s what you hear in those artists. I mean we have plenty of artists in the Mid-West that you might not like but they’re still great. But you might not like them because of the shit they’re talking about in their songs. They’re talking about the stuff that they had to deal with but you might not ever hear them because you’re not as tapped in to the underground gangster scene or the underground whatever, you’re more tapped in to the underground everyman scene, and so you know who P.O.S is, you know who I am.

Right now somewhere in London I bet there’s a kid who is tapped in to that scene who doesn’t even know who the fuck I am. So I can’t necessarily say that we produce a lot of great creative artists, I think more so we’re lucky you tapped in to what we’re doing. You know, opinions on who’s good, who’s fresh, who’s whack, they’re all just opinions. It just so happens that one year more people got jobs writing freelance stories that were into that type of music and then one year people who got in to the rap stuff and got those jobs and some exposure comes with that. You get to expose certain types of artist. I see how it works at a local level in my own city and I get to see how it works on an international level.

Five years ago I came over here, did tonnes of press and nobody gave a shit who I was. I had people interviewing me who had never heard of me before, they’d just got a copy of ‘GodLovesUgly’ in the mail a week before the interview. Now I come over here and everybody that talks to me knows who I am. Not only that but they have the records, they’re actually fans of it. I see how it moves in ways. Eventually you guys will have to get real jobs because writing isn’t gonna fucking cut it, unless you get to be one of those lucky few that builds straight careers out of it. In which case the people who are coming in underneath you who are some kinda “I’m gonna fucking do this even if I’m broke” shit. They might be listening to a whole different type of shit, that’s the thing about exposure.

Is there anywhere in particular you like playing shows or do you still get the best reception in your hometown?

Slug: Ant can do this, because you know what I’m gonna say if I answer this one.
Ant: I would be the same I guess..
Slug: London! (laughs)
Ant: You’re surprised that anybody gives a shit about you so its a great thing. You love playing that day because there’s people there that want to see you. And they wanna shake your hand, buy a CD, all that shit. And you’re so grateful it doesn’t matter where you’re playing so that makes them all pretty much equal.

Slug, you seem to appear on tracks with people like Vadim, Evidence, to Rob Zombie. Do you initiate a lot of these collaborations and how many of them do you turn down?

Slug: I rarely initiate them and I usually turn them down. I turn down way more than I take on. My rule has kinda always been I only work with friends, I only do stuff with people that I know. I’m not really big on doing a sixteen with somebody’s song who I know nothing about. So when people offer me money or food I usually say no. If its a friend I won’t charge them and for me that’s been a great experience because then, every project I do do, I stand by it, I believe in it. I did it because of how I feel about the person I was doing it for. I’ve got a small handful of things where I’m like “Hm I shouldn’t have done that” because that guy seemed nice the one time I met him, but now, y’know I realise he’s a bad guy that kicks puppies & shit. Yeah I don’t really initiate, I have an endless supply of music to rap to from Anthony so I don’t really need to go out looking for other things to rap to.

You opened up the Fifth Element store in 2000. How have things developed there in the past 8 years?

Slug: Its fairly aligned with the rest of the music industry as far as independent stores go. Vinyl sales are way down, as compared to where they were in say, 1999, when everyone was scouting around trying to find 12″ because there were only 2000 of them pressed.. MP3’s have slowed down vinyl sales to almost nothing. As far as the store being a home base, or a place where people can congregate with likeminded thoughts, ideas, other artists, all these people. At this point its a really important thing for our community, in my city, but I almost wish there were 7 or 8 more of them. I wish other people in my city were putting in effort towards trying to get spaces like that, if not a record store a place that does shows, somewhere people will come together. There’s a lot of people in my scene, in my city that are doing this but there’s not a whole lot of sharing of ideas. Everybody kinda sticks to their own camp. You’ve got Doomtree they stick to Doomtree. Rhymesayers stick to Rhymesayers, a few other groups in the city. We all know each other, we all say hi to each other at the bar and shit, but there’s so much shit that I can tell other rappers in my city about the things I’ve done and seen that could make things a little easier for them if they tried to go and do their version. I’ve learned so many little secrets and magic tricks when it comes to all this and the only people I really get to share that shit with are the Rhymesayers people who hang out at the store.

You did a track a while ago for The Planets, are there more British artists you would like to work with?

Slug: I’ve met a lot of people over here, as far as working with them, that’s a tough call. It would really require right place right time, kinda like the thing with The Planets. The way that worked out was really good. There’s a couple of people here who I think are fresh but I don’t like to answer that question because it makes me sound like I’m trying to hook up with people and make stuff with them when in all honesty I don’t really care, if it happens it happens. There’s a kid named Jehst that I’ve seen a couple of times, that dudes dope. I even played a show with him once, somewhere that starts with a ‘B’ and reminded me of San Francisco.. Brighton. I played with him there. That was pretty dope. But yeah he’s the only one, everybody else sucks. (laughs)

He is our best. How did the track with The Planets come about?

They were friends with Musab. So I got to talk to them and whatnot. The thing there is I’m really good friends with Musab, so that was on him, that’d kinda be like if Musab called me up and said “We’re gonna go rob this bank, I got these two friends from the UK, I’m gonna vouch for them” For me it became an opportunity to come together, the one dude especially, I can’t remember his name right now. This place might as well of been like Mars to me, I don’t think we’d even been to New York yet when we did that, so it was like “Thank you Musab, I owe you one for that.”

Ant, do you have any other records you’ve produced lined up for release outside of Atmosphere?

Ant: There’s another Brother Ali EP about to come out. Those are pretty much the only two artists I work with.

How did the MF DOOM sign to Rhymesayers come about? I think a lot of people expected him to go to Stones Throw because they have such a close relationship..

Slug: Doom is kind of a free agent, the situation he has with us is not a situation where we require him to put all of his music out through us. We respect his room to breathe. Its one thing for Rhymesayers to be involved in a rappers career but Doom is like beyond just being a rapper. Even within him there is all of this other stuff in his story, I don’t know if one label could take him on, they would have to be a major with a lot of manpower and time and whatnot. I like the fact that other labels put stuff out. He sticks with really respectable people. I cant say people were shocked. I would say look at his career, he’s been doing this stuff for so long. I see him in the same way I would see certain blues artists if we were in a blues category instead of rap. But that guy gets to do whatever he wants. He came up with a lot of these styles that we’re fucking with today.

You’ve been approached by all the major labels, why did you pick Epitaph?

Slug: Because we didn’t really want to sign a deal with anyone. The Epitaph situation is that its just for distribution. Its no different to what we did before the year before with Fat Beats for the GodLovesUgly record. It was just more of a defining version of it, meaning like the money was pretty much identical, the concept was identical but Epitaph had more of a vision of exactly what they wanted to do with it whereas Fat Beats was only just starting off as a label. They’d been doing vinyl distro for a decade but had never really licensed an album to try to work as an album. I thought they did a great job with it, they stepped us up to where we are and its been a continuing process ever since. After that we gave it to a company called Navar which is a distro company. The thing about Epitaph is they’re also a label, but as a distro company they do this kinda thing with a lot of different artists. They basically just license an album, you’re still signed to your label. I’m still a Rhymesayers artists, but they just kinda get behind it like a big brother and be like “Let him on the swing next” and hopefully they’ll listen to me cuz they know that I’m friends with all these other kids. Then we went to Navar, which is a local company based out of Minnesota, it was really comfortable for us to deal with them because like, you don’t have to call them. You can go to their office with a baseball bat and be like, “Hey”. But yeah they do the same thing Epitaph were able to do and with the new record it will be through Warner like Brother Ali’s was. Its just a distro game for us. If you speak to most indie labels, its very similar compared to what we’ve done as far as licensing goes. Or they were just smart enough to get distro from one place in the beginning. But we couldn’t do that and stick with Fat Beats because the reach they had just wasn’t as strong, Fat Beats were putting their stuff out through a company called BMG and that was the equivalent of a paper boy on a bicycle. He throws the paper at your house and that shit might land on your porch, in your bushes, your neighbour might come get it. Its just been a cycle continuously of us trying to find the correct distro. I think Warner obviously being such a heavy hitter with such a big baseball bat at the playground, its probably one of the best places we could’ve landed our distribution.

Slug, you’ve been involved with a lot of crews over the years. The Orphanage, Deep Puddle Dynamics, Dynospectrum. Are there any plans to get back together with any of them?

Slug: Out of those three only one of them that was ever a crew was the Dynospectrum. Orphanage and Deep Puddle were kind of like, “Lets all get together this one time and make a record. Lets go spend the next 5 days together and make a record.” So that’s more like a side project. You can hear in The Orphanage and Deep Puddle that we all weren’t talking about the same shit, having the same focus or vision. We were all just like “Its my turn?.. Go.” Whereas with Dynospectrum that’s really old for me, we did that in like 1996. I still feel like you can hear continuity in that album, even though we were four different people doing our own verses, you could tell we kinda knew each other and hung out together. Those guys were my friends to the extent of a long-distance phone call every week as we were discussing the record. When I agreed to do it I didn’t know any of them. The Orphanage I did know all those guys but you’ve basically got five rappers who are all good in their own right, its like too many chefs.. you know what I mean? I think if we’d spent maybe 3 months doing that record we would’ve been smart enough to get the focus right, the energies, but instead you just ended up with five posse cuts, over and over. There were never any real visions or goals, we just rapped because it was fun to rap. I think with Deep Puddle we did have a vision and a goal but even upon listening to the record I still am like “What the fuck is everybody talking about?”. A lot of people liked that because that’s what they wanted to hear at the time. Its the same as like four jazz guys getting together and doing free jazz in their own direction. Maybe if we had known each other for a while and spent more time working on the album we would’ve been able to hear more continuity or focus but otherwise that record is like, you pick which one of us you like the most and you pay that attention when their verse starts.

How was it working with Tom Waits, how did that come about?

Ant: It was beautiful. Yeah, he was the shit. He came in with all these instruments and shit, it was pretty tight. But he ended up beat boxing.
Slug: He’s been begging to work with us forever (laughs). I’ve been begging to work with that dude for a long time and finally I just did what any good person would do and I just uh, became friends with his kid.. (laughs) Well the real answer, He said to send him the song, he sent it back and we listened to what he did, picked a beat box turned it up and pressed record. Pretty much.

Ant, There seems to be a heavy almost country influence to some of your beats. We heard a lap steel guitar playing on the new album before, where does that influence come from?

Ant: I’ve always been intrigued by the lap steel. And the harp, those are two rare instruments in Hip Hop to me. I already did the harp thing on Overcast but the lap steel I’ve used before, in samples but to actually have a guy that can play that shit. They came in and played the parts that I had and he just put his own twist on them. I wanted to do the whole record like that because I remember when we were doing that shit I almost cried its so beautiful. I love the sound of that and I don’t recall that sound being in Hip Hop. I was very proud to be a part of that, I had a couple of others that were similar but they were more quirky, that was more of a heartfelt sound and that’s wanted to do. I didn’t want it to be corny, I didn’t want it to be a joke.
Slug: That shits no joke. I like it because it reminds me of a song by Chris Isaacs. Partly because I know what you’re talking about but I never see it that way. Reminds me of a beach. He had a beach in his video.. So when I listen to that so I’m like “Yeah, sippin’ Piña Coladas”.

Slug, where did the inspiration for the children’s book come from? Is it something you’ve always been planning?

Slug: I wouldn’t say planning.. I always used to joke about it. I figured I might as well do it, I’ve joked about it to enough people and if I don’t I’m kinda a chump. I always thought that I liked to write. Funny thing is, I don’t like to read. So having a child I think I’ve read way more children’s books than I have actual contemporary novels, yknow. I’m not big on research so if I wanted to write a book, whatever the hell its about I’m gonna have to research, its a lot of work. So having read a lot of children’s books over the past 13 years I started to notice things that I really respected. The way they were able to pull of stories simplistically with the smallest amount of words possible. I’ve always been a fan of minimalism art. When people give you a visual using the smallest amount possible. When we finished this record I was like, I can probably write a children’s story that can tell the same exact theory and moral that I’m trying to tell with this record and it can accompany the record. So I can’t say I always planned it but I’m glad I finally did it. I might’ve sucked at it, so we’ll see. If I look at it when it comes out and think it doesn’t suck I might try it again but not with the album just write an actual children’s book.

I guess its down to your son’s verdict?

Slug: Well he’s 13 now, he’s going to think its dorky either way. He thinks I’m a nerd, big time. He’s a lot cooler than me.

Are you guys coming back over this year to tour with the new album?
Slug: Yeah this summer we hope, wish me luck.

Thank you.
Slug:You guys are way better at this than I am.

Interview by Jen & Fyshh.

www.myspace.com/atmosphere
www.rhymesayers.com

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