Atmosphere perform in The Current studios
November 01, 2016
After listening to their music for nearly two decades and writing countless words about their shows and songs, this week I finally got around to speaking on the record to Slug.
The duo of Slug and Ant, along with their touring DJ Plain Ole Bill, came by the Current's studios to perform songs off their new album, Fishing Blues, and talk about their long and prolific career. Well, Slug did 95% percent of the talking, though I did manage to get a couple words out of Ant — mostly that he likes the way Slug smells, which is an important trait for a partner he's spent years touring alongside. We talked about what's kept them together, what they've learned from sharing a hometown with Prince, and how Slug, who is of mixed race, feels about years of being mislabeled a "white rapper."
Find many of the highlights of our conversation below, and listen to the full session for performances of the new songs "Seismic Waves" and "Perfect," plus an oldie from their 2008 Sad Clown, Bad Spring #12 EP called "Happymess."
Andrea Swensson: You've been incredibly prolific in recent years. What is it about this moment in your life that has inspired you to write so much?
Slug: Just hanging out with my friend Anthony, kicking it with Bill. It's been easy to become more focused on being creative as I slowly shed some of the other things that I used to focus on.
Andrea: Like what?
Slug: Partying. Running these streets. Anthony moved back — he was living out in the Bay, in California for a while, and we were still making music but we were kind of doing the sending stuff to each other over the computer thing. When he came back, we started hanging out together in a way that it used to be. And I just realized that there's really nothing I'd rather be doing; if the kids are in bed or at school, then I want to make music.
Andrea: You have been a duo for over 20 years now. What is it about each other?
Slug: [points to Ant] He smells good. He does! I smell him from here.
Andrea: I wanted to ask you a little bit about Prince, because you shout him out several times on this new record. I'm curious to know, as someone who has also come up in Minneapolis and has toured the world, what does it mean to be from the same place as Prince?
Slug: Well, you know we made the record before he passed. So after he passed, I almost felt awkward about the references to him, because I didn't want to become another one of these artists who were name-dropping him in order to get your attention. But we left it in because it was natural. Growing up here — and I don't know that I can speak for everybody, but at least for myself, and my experience with being a creative in this town — he broke a lot of barriers for a lot of us, and just allowed us to feel comfortable with just being ourselves, or letting our freak flag fly. As a label, and as a company, we've always done things outside of the industry norm. And I know a lot of those things, he kind of set the precedence for. Whether or not we were even consciously aware of it, his influence on us as creatives, as well as business people, it was super heavy, super thick for us.
Andrea: Did you ever get to meet him?
Slug: Not in the traditional sense of meeting somebody. I did get to share some space with him once. He came down with a mutual friend; Robyne Robinson brought him down to the Front one night, back when James Everest and all of the Groove Garden guys used to throw a weekly at this place called the Front, which was in front of Ground Zero. There was a residency that they had there. We would all go down and kind of have jam sessions; there'd be a couple of rappers, a couple of jazz guys. And I kind of became the default rap guy, because I worked at the Electric Fetus with James and everybody.
One night I was down there with, ultimately, what turned out to be the Dynospectrum, me and I Self Devine and Gene Pool, and Prince showed up. We were on stage at the time, and we'd noticed him come through the door; I remember I Self turned to me and was like, "Hey, is that Little Man over there?" And I'm like, "That is totally Little Man over there!" So the pressure's on; we've got to rap in front of Prince, who doesn't like rap, we knew this. He wasn't the hugest rap fan at the time. So I did my thing. I used to close my eyes and try to go in my head to freestyle, and try to come up with as much weird things that rhymed as I could, and before I knew it, John Keston, who was on the piano that night, was kind of beatin' on it a little too hard, and I turned to look and give him a side-eye, like yo, I can't rap over what you're doing, and it wasn't him anymore. It was Prince. He had gotten up there and started beating on the piano. And it was intimidating. So I forced myself to rap. Because I didn't want to stop, just to give him his room. Even though he's Prince and you've got to give him his room, I had to make sure I could go home that night and call my mom and say, "Mom, I rapped with Prince."
Andrea: So what happened?
Slug: He didn't even know I was there. He banged away — I eventually gave in and let him bang away, and then he hopped off the stage to a standing ovation to the 150 people in the room, and then he beelined right out the door, never came back.
Andrea: There is so much I want to ask you about the song "Perfect."
Slug: Let's unpack it! Let's go!
Andrea: The verse that really stands out to me is the one that talks about your identity, your ethnicity, being a feminist and misogynist, all these dualities. It makes me wonder about how you're often classified as a "white rapper"; do you feel like part of your identity has been obscured or erased by the way people talk about Atmosphere?
Slug: I mean, I always approached that in the same way that I approached art, where it's like, if you give me the opportunity to define or stand for what I do, I do it. I do it to a fault. But in many cases, once it's put out there, once the song is out, once there's a photo floating, I had to deal with the fact that people made their own interpretations of what was going on. Early on in my career, I pushed back really hard. When people would say "Top 5 white rappers," I pushed back on that in general. Then when they started putting me in that category, I'd be that guy on the internet arguing on message boards: "I'm not white! I'm not white!" But I was reminded of when I was in high school - when the police came, they saw a white guy. I didn't get the same treatment that my friends were getting. I was getting preferred treatment in cases, you know? When the house party was getting broken up, I wasn't pushed against the wall and interrogated. I was told to leave. It's a reality that I've had to deal with, and a thing I've tried to work with and made sure to address. But I reached a place somewhere in the early years of Atmosphere where I just decided, well, I get to be a spy. I get to be the guy that's in the room hearing what some of these jerk-offs are saying, and then I can take what they're saying and compile those notes, so that later on we can make note of who's the jerk and who's not.
Andrea: Do you consider yourself a mentor to other artists coming up in the scene?
Slug: I didn't used to. I used to feel like I was in competition. But somewhere along the way, I guess I realized that I had reached a position of not just being a competitive force, a guy for people to try to outdo, or somebody standing on top of some sort of ant hill; I realized that there was some sort of gatekeeper responsibility that had been put on me. And that's when I really started to try to pay attention to how I conducted myself, and how I spoke with other artists or even with people outside the artist community. And also with how I spend my money, where I spend my time, how I treat all of it. There's a lot riding on not just me, but certain artists in this community who have reached some sort of success. Because there's a lot of younger dudes and women coming up underneath us that want to figure it out. And they've got things to say, important things to say, and they've got a lot of great energy to offer.
Andrea: What's one piece of advice that you'd give someone brand new?
Slug: It's the same advice that I've been giving for awhile now: Be honest. With the people who are listening to you; with the people who are working with you; be honest with yourself. I know we refer to this as a game and a hustle, but it's not. It's bigger than that. Just remember you can build a much wider, stronger, longer bridge if you're building it on things that are real.
Videos
Songs performed
"Seismic Waves"
"Perfect"
"Happymess"
"Seismic Waves" and "Perfect" are from Fishing Blues; "Happymess" is from Sad Clown, Bad Spring #12 both on Rhymesayers Entertainment.
Hosted by Andrea Swensson
Produced by Derrick Stevens
Engineered by Michael DeMark
Visuals by Nate Ryan and Evan Frost
