The conflicted & emotionally charged, self depreciating lyricism that you hear on an Atmosphere record is 100% Slug. After my time with him I had never been more aroused, confused, enraged & speechless in my life. Between believing that Women publicists are used to seduce Male journalists into reviewing product and explaining to me that it is not part of his job description to fuck groupies, but he is very sexually wise, I was left somewhat reassured that the thought filled, angst ridden, hypocritical & sexually aware rapper we love to listen to is actually keeping it real.
It tends to be a love him or hate him reaction when you ask most hip hoppers about Atmosphere’s Slug. Most guys think he’s a pussy and most girls just want to give it up to him, then there are the rest of us who sit on the sidelines, waiting for something brilliant to happen. Despite the bad reviews their latest LP You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having has been subjected to, Slug maintains that it is “The closest that me & Ant have ever come to having what our vision is, refined & focused and placed into a pair of headphones. I am incredibly happy with this record” The duo have come some way, this being their 5th studio offering together as well as a multitude of involvement with Dynosphere, Felt & running their own label Rhymesayers Entertainment. “We were from a city called Minneapolis and labels didn’t care about us, I don’t mean that in a whining ‘oh they should have been looking for us’ kinda way. We weren’t good enough to be on major labels, our label was built on common sense and not a lot of alternatives. When we were screaming ‘independent as fuck’ it wasn’t because the labels are baddies, we were independent as fuck because we had no choice.” Years later they are one of the highest selling Underground outfits to come out of the US, but that still isn’t the point. “Record sales are great but it’s not the end of the world and it’s not the beginning of the world, it just is what it is, it’s part of the machine”.
Also part of that machine is the press, a facet of hip hop that Slug believes has become more socially acceptable for women to take part in, whilst the majority of the artists & journalists are still men. “Only 5% of the journalists that I talk to are women. But all the publicists are women, why do you think the publicists are women? Because the publicists, as women, are being used sexually to entice these male journalists to write about these stupid fucking bands. If you have a dorky music nerd working down at the city paper, and this woman gets on the phone and is like ‘yeah I really think you should check out this Atmosphere CD’ it totally, vocally seduces the guy on the other end of the phone. And the music nerd, he’s happy when the publicists call cos it’s the closest connection he gets to talking to a woman about music”. If this is the case then Eminem’s publicist must be whoring herself. Maybe artists should start asking their publicists to give out blowjobs with each promotional CD, they might even win a Grammy!
Despite his misguided comments, he tends to look upon the gender division with somewhat of an indignation, taking a firm stance when it comes to the taking advantage of women by hip hoppers. “I have girls that definitely make it obvious to me that they are making themselves available to me. In that situation, it’s more important to me to let them know, that No I won’t sign your breast, it demeans both of us. No I don’t want to fuck you, even if you’re a supermodel, I think it’s important for them to actually get that sort of a response. People think that I’m harsh, but it’s kinda like ‘well what, is it part of my job to fuck these girls? Is it in my job description? When I handed in my resume did it say I’m really good at performing cunnilingis?’.
Though he illudes to be good at performing cunnilingus ‘I have a lot of wisdom when it comes to sex’, he does not want to be portrayed as ‘Mr Fucking Feminist’ despite his somewhat pro-female views on the social acceptance of women having as much freedom in hip hop and what they listen to as the men. ‘It’s really difficult for a woman hip hop head to embrace gun rap. In America if you’re a woman and you like the real underground gangster shit, like 36 mafia, people think you’re a dyke. There is such a push against women liking it unless 50 cent has a hot body. It’s okay to like Ludacris because of the sexual stuff and it’s okay for women to like Slug because it’s all sensitive or some dumb shit but they’re not allowed to like gangster rap’ which is either a reflection of US culture, Atmosphere or just plain ridiculous. The album is less confusing than the artist and it is in stores now.
Atmosphere’s new album ‘You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having’ is out now through Rhymesayers/Shogun.
