Atmosphere by Dan Monick
If you think of raw DIY creativity in hip hop, you think of Atmosphere. With their blunt lyricism and bracing homemade beats, twin pillars Slug and Ant (rapper Sean Daley and DJ/producer Anthony Davis) have been vertebrae in hip hop’s spine almost since they were high-schoolers in Minneapolis in the ’90s. With their new album, “Mi Vida Local,” they deliver hard truths and old–school energy at a moment when both are sorely needed.
From this duo’s founding insight and creative need came one of the most innovative and uncompromising indie record labels around, Rhymesayers. It took the brainpower, drive, passion, and certainly the desperation of Slug and Ant, along with partners Musab and Siddiq, to show future self-starters a way forward. That same burning ingenuity fuels every Atmosphere album and their live show.
Hip hop is a monster of its own making. It reveals itself in endless forms, finds you through defenseless eardrums, and takes over like nerve damage. More than a genre, it is an elemental, boundless expression that can’t be controlled or steered, only ridden like a wave in heavy weather. The forerunners of the movement are the pioneers who, like rogue scientists, experimented on themselves. Atmosphere are inheritors and extenders of this methodical madness.
If you’re a stranger to their work, know that you can expect everything your aching soul needs. A model Atmosphere song is unapologetically dark and unequivocally real. Slug and Ant speak through lyrics and smoldering beats to the endless struggle of getting through this thing called life. “I’m certain all that pain is for a purpose,” Slug quips on a new track, “Stopwatch,” that seesaws between resolve and self-doubt: “Someday your work will find its way to get observed/It’s just there’s too many words/And nobody’s gettin’ heard.”
Almost nobody. Slug and Ant have built and held an audience. That they did it by their own lights, from inception to evolution and beyond, makes it easy for listeners to be inspired: Everything they’ve created, all of their art, is absolutely what it’s supposed to be. Atmosphere is the anti-sellout.
Atmosphere performs with deM atlaS, The Lioness and DJ Keezy, 7pm November 29 at Revolution in Fort Lauderdale, $22-$55. atmosphere.bandcamp.com
~ Freddie Zandt
