Atmosphere new album.....

[Elano]

http://www.myspace.com/atmosphere

http://www.rhymesayers.com/

[JAZ]

yeah, im more excited about this than i am about my girl having a baby soon.

[K.Dub]

yeah, im more excited about this than i am about my girl having a baby soon.

 


Yeeah, this gon' be good, I hope.
Let's hope Slug has been mad depressive lately

[thisoneguy360]

Definitely checkin this..Stricktly Leakage was dope

[NiCc_FrUm_ThA_nO]

it leaked already!
found some links for it already..I wanna order the deluxe edition but i dont think i got enuff cash

[JAZ]

wow. ant beats got better. he let go of the usual kick snare. pretty fucking awesome. pm for link.

[Elano]

Over a million albums sold on the underground rap circuit, an international fanbase, and critical acclaim that seems to get bigger with every record release - Minneapolis hip hop duo Atmosphere have a lot to be happy about these days. Since their debut with 1997's Overcast!, producer Ant and emcee Slug have traveled the globe and earned the crown as one of the biggest names in independent hip hop with their own Rhymesayers record label.

 

But forget all of that - right now, Slug (aka Sean Daley) is most excited about...talking to Okayplayer. "I've been waiting 20 years to get some sort of response out of the hip hop community that listens to the same shit that I listen to," he laughs. "I get all this love from the places that I don't necessarily relate to. When I looked at the list of phone calls I was doing today and saw Okayplayer, I was like, ‘why the fuck would they want to interview me? Don't nobody at that site like me.' So I'm excited, this is the shit to me."

Count Okayplayer as one of many who have caught the Atmosphere bug as of late. In the past year alone, they've put out four new installments in their Sad Clown EP series and a completely free online album called Strictly Leakage, all leading up to the release of their sixth full album, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold. The record features Slug's trademark personal musings, delivered with a confidence that can only come with as many years as he's spent in the game. It's an evolution that the emcee has clearly spent time analyzing. 

"When I first started putting out albums, I didn't know what I was doing. Really, I still don't know," he says with no trace of irony in his voice. Influenced by the conscious period of hip hop, he found himself developing his craft in an underground era fixated on battle raps. "I fell into that battle bullshit and played along with it, but I began to realize that that wasn't me being me. I wanted to be an extension of KRS, Brother J, and Brand Nubian, but if I came out on some Afrocentric shit, motherfuckers are going to look at me sideways."

"When I used to listen to X-Clan, I thought the revolution was going to happen next Tuesday. The difference now is that the revolution I speak of is the one that really won't be televised, because it's internal; I figured out how to turn it into a personal revolution," he says. "People will give me shit about not speaking on social/political shit, but I do. I put them in metaphors, in a song like ‘Always Coming Back Home To You.' Or maybe a song that I wrote about the dichotomy between a man and a woman, to use as a metaphor for something else. For me, the revolution really does start inside because if you can't make yourself right, how you gonna tell me that you can make the whole city right?"

When Life Gives You Lemons... also features the sharper-than-ever soulful production that Ant is becoming known for more and more these days.  Stemming from the recent addition of live instruments to Atmosphere's live show, the album is more musical than anything the band has done before, and features no samples aside from the drums. The musicians on record studied the samples that Ant had selected and replayed the elements themselves, often gathering the gear and equipment the original artists had used.

"With this record, we really wanted the Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis sound, from the drum noises to the movements they'd use within their songs. When I look at Minneapolis in the ‘80s, it's like they were doing a colder version of the funk. From there, we kind of explored what else was going on in Minneapolis during that time: the Replacements, they were doing a colder version of the rock sound. I look at Godlovesugly and I think it's a colder version of us trying to capture BDP's third record," Slug notes. "The geography here really does reflect in the music. We kind of tried to run with that winter depression vibe for this album."

The musical direction might draw comparisons to another hip hop live band you might have heard about, and don't think that hasn't crossed Slug's mind. "There was this fear of people trying to compare us to the Roots," he admits. "Every other rap band in the world are either kind of Roots wannabes, or they sound like hippie jam bands with a rapper. I didn't want to be either, so I kind of had to figure out how to do this. I think we successfully found our sound on this record ¬- it's a definitive mix of rap and ‘80s music. And I don't mean how Kanye did it on Graduation, because he made it well produced and it was fresh. I don't know if we remember but production of the ‘80s really wasn't that well produced; it was raw. They were still trying to figure out the technology at the time, and that makes sense because me and Anthony are still trying to figure all that shit out."

If that's the case, they've certainly put in a lot of practice in the past year with all of the recordings leading up to the album's release. "None of that stuff was ever supposed to be on When Life Gives You Lemons...," Slug says about the EPs and online album. "We made Lemons in the fall of '06. When '07 came, I started getting ideas for other projects because I was told I wouldn't get a release date till April 2008. I was like, ‘if I can't have the record come out till then, then I gotta do something.' I was totally inspired by John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, of all people, who released six albums in six months [in 2004]. I thought that was tight. People who loved him loved the fact that he did that, even if it wasn't so much about the actual songs. It was more about the campaign."

That campaign included more than just an influx of album releases. In an unprecedented move in the industry, Atmosphere opted not to send out promo copies of When Life Gives You Lemons... to the media in advance of the album's release. Rather than follow the traditional method of press, the duo threw listening parties in select major cities in both the U.S. and Europe, personally playing the record for journalists in conference rooms, bars, and one-on-one rides in a rented van. The whole move was an expensive endeavor that garnered scornful accusations from some media outlets, but Slug nonetheless counts it as a worthwhile marketing experiment.

"The reason why I didn't leak the record wasn't anti-journalist or anti-leak; it was pro-fan. We weren't trying to stop illegal downloading, we're trying to build anticipation so that when I hit the tour the music is still fresh in peoples' heads. The label looked at it as a good thing; ‘maybe it will lead to more physical sales,'" Slug explains. "Now, I'm not stupid. Let's pretend it doesn't leak from the warehouse. The minute the record gets released, it will definitely leak, and the people that didn't want to buy it in the first place still definitely ain't gonna buy it."

"I first learned what a release date was when I was 16; prior to that I thought you just go to the store, find the Ultra Mag tape, buy it, and go home. Then I started paying attention to the industry and got a little job at an independent record store, and all of that excited me just as much as rapping excited me. I'm just trying to capture that excitement into what we do, mostly because it makes my job that much more fun," he says. "It's not as big a deal as what Radiohead or Trent Reznor did, but for my peers, it's important that somebody can try it, and I'm in a better position to try this out. We won't be able to tell till six months after the record comes out; at the end of the cycle we can look at what worked and what didn't, and create a new process the next time Brother Ali got a record out. Even people outside of Rhymesayers who are watching this right now can follow."

A week after our initial interview, I call Slug (upon his request) to notify him that When Life Gives You Lemons...  has leaked. "Yeah, I just got a call from someone else a few hours ago," he says, though he doesn't sound all too upset. "I'm thinking about just going ahead and putting the album up on MySpace at this point [Ed. Note: he does]. Six days before the album drops, it leaks? That's a success to me." True to his own title, Slug is all about taking life's lemons and painting that shit gold.

[Doggystylin]

yeah, im more excited about this than i am about my girl having a baby soon.

 


Yeeah, this gon' be good, I hope.
Let's hope Slug has been mad depressive lately

thats fucked up but thats really what results in good music

[Laconic]

Yo this shit came in at #5 on the top 200 Billboard w/over 36k sold.  Crazy shit.  Slug said You Cant Imagine...only sold around 19k in 2005 which was their highest selling first week until now.  Congrats to Atmosphere.

[K.Dub]

yeah, im more excited about this than i am about my girl having a baby soon.

 


Yeeah, this gon' be good, I hope.
Let's hope Slug has been mad depressive lately

thats fucked up but thats really what results in good music

True

Yo this shit came in at #5 on the top 200 Billboard w/over 36k sold.  Crazy shit.  Slug said You Cant Imagine...only sold around 19k in 2005 which was their highest selling first week until now.  Congrats to Atmosphere.

Wow, that's great!

[Elano]

this album is fuckin dope

[Ali Tha Great]

yeah, im more excited about this than i am about my girl having a baby soon.

lol...+1

[Doggystylin]

yeah, im more excited about this than i am about my girl having a baby soon.

lol...+1

yo, you should check out atmosphere

[Ali Tha Great]

yeah, im more excited about this than i am about my girl having a baby soon.

lol...+1

yo, you should check out atmosphere

fasho...i'll download it right know...

[thisoneguy360]

can someone pm me this shit?