Atmosphere released their seventh studio album, The Family Sign late last year and are celebrating that with tour dates in New Zealand. We caught up with the eloquently named Slug to discuss their latest album, how their back catalogue is a reflection of their personalities at the time, and why the music industry should "fucking die".
(Comes into the interview late) Yo I’m so sorry about that I love you I’ll buy you a coffee.
That's sweet, do you have a massive line of interviews today?
Yeah and it’s really weird because it’s night time here and I never get to do these at night, which means my brain is already fried before I get to the interview shit because I’ve been using my brain and my mouth all fucking day already. So here we are, and I’ve got to pretend to have something intelligent to say, so here we go.
Good luck, you can always make something up. Let's start by discussing the writing and recording process for the latest album.
OK yeah, well, do you guys call it soccer or football?
- soccer –
- so here we have this creature that we call the ‘Soccer Mum’, which I’m sure you guys have. I wanted to make a record that would make Soccer Mum’s think I was hot. So I was trying to figure out what would make a 38-42 year old mum get sloppy drunk and make out with me...nah I’m not good at making stuff up -
Like most of the records that we put out this record was just another mutation of where I am in my life – at least from my angle because I write the raps. The raps were mostly influenced by where my life was at, but that’s how all of our records are. You can kind of follow my life by looking at my records and what year they came out. Someday when I’m dead maybe somebody will study what I went through and he’ll be able to look at the records and pinpoint what person I was at that point in my life.
Because that’s the opportunity I’ve been given - I’ve been blessed in a sense that I’m allowed to be myself on these records, for better and for worse. There are records where I sound like a little jaded prick piece of shit asshole, and that’s because in my world and in my life I was a little jaded prick asshole piece of shit and it hasn’t been all great and it hasn’t been all bad. It’s been a healthy mix of everything, just like everyones life should be.
Reflecting on the finished album, what do you think this one says about where you’re at?
Lyrically it’s about where I’m at. Musically it’s where Anthony’s at because Ant’s music also suggests a mood that fits along with what his life is like at the time. An album like Headshot: SE7EN, if you approach it from a musical standpoint that record is all over the place – it’s confusing – and I think that’s reflective of what Anthony was going through at the time. And then the Mohawk record - the one with the Mohawk on it - is very aggressive and reflective at the same time and that’s a good reflection of where both of us were at at our time of the our lives. The music totally speaks for Anthony in the way the lyrics speak for me.
Do you go into the writing process knowing what you want to get down or is a more organic process than that?
Nah it just builds as it goes. There’s times where I start to write a song and by the time I’m done with it I’ll know what it’s really about, which is what I was telling myself in a way. Sometimes the songs shed light on my life for me. There have been times where I’ve learned about myself because of a song I’ve been working on.
Did that happen at any point in the latest album?
Definitely. There was a lot of that in this particular record. This record was the one that solidified a lot of shit in my world. This is the record that made me say, ‘yeah I’m not hanging out with those people ever again’ and ‘I don’t give a fuck about proving who I am’ and you know, as you get old and grumpy you start to give a fuck less about what people think of you and I think this record really helps me deal with that and reach a place where I don’t give a shit what my scene thinks of me, I don’t care what my contemporaries think of me. I give a fuck what my family and my friends think of me and beyond that let the chips fall where they may. I extend that respect to the audience. I’m not going to pander to anybody to get you to like my music. If you don’t like my music I’m OK with that. There’s a whole lot of music you could go spend your time on, you don’t have to spend your time with mine.
You have a unique rapping style. How did you develop that?
I mean I think my influences all came from the music I listened to when I was 17. So 90% of my influence is based on rap music that came out between the years of 1987 and 1989, so the likes of Biz Markie. That's why I’m one part conscious rap and one part, I donno, I make songs for the ladies sometimes, and then one part joke, I like to crack jokes I like to be sarcastic I like it when people laugh a lot. That’s where all of my shit extends from is Biz Markie and Big Daddy Kane.
You guys have been a group for a long time now, how have you noticed hip hop change and develop over the past two decades?
I feel like it’s managed to be what it’s supposed to be. It hasn’t lost touch with what it’s job is. Hip hop’s job as a culture is to bring different people together and unify them for a few different reasons. Unify them through a party, unify them through information, unify them through an idea, unify them through an identity. It gives kids an identity who don’t necessary have an identity who could fall into the cracks.
Hip hop has been there to give a bunch of us who don’t have identities identities and I think it still does that. It did that when I was a kid and I think in the nineties Wu Tang did that for people. Granted there’s always been some hip hop to hate on which is just as important. Through the years there’s been plenty of hip hop that the underground has gone ‘fuck that artist, he’s a sell-out’. That’s important, there has to be sell-outs, there has to be all these different facets to give these kids that identity, that underdog identity, and to let them know that they can overcome.
This is struggle music, it was born from struggle, and it deals with struggle. Whether it does that by reminding you of the struggle, whether it deals with it by fantasizing the struggle, whether it deals with it by actually breaking down and giving you logical options of how to deal with the struggle or it goes 'let’s just dance tonight and for one night forget about the fucking struggle'. I think hip hop still definitely does that. Look at the Odd Futures and the ASAP Rocky's and these people that are doing it now, and this is just as important. They’re speaking to kids and unifying kids in the same way NWA did it when I was a kid. It would be really easy for me to act my age and say ‘I don’t understand what kids listen to these days’ but that doesn’t make any sense because that’s what they were saying when I was a kid and I can’t go for that, I can’t fall for that. I have to believe it and react to it accordingly and I think it’s important to embrace the fact that hip hop is still pissing off adults and that’s part of it’s job.
What are your thoughts on how the technological revolution has change the nature of music?
Truthfully we’re a people of adaption because everything we do is done out of necessity. We started a label because the industry didn’t give a fuck about us anyway so we said 'fuck it' and did it out of necessity. Speaking for myself, I don’t give a shit, fuck the industry. I own a record label and I’m saying that. The truth is that there is no such thing as the industry. The industry was invented out of imagination. The imagination of someone who was like ‘hey, let’s figure out a way to make money off of these people who are making music’. If you go back 150 years you’d be lucky to get a bowl of soup and a pillow to lay your head on tonight if you knew how to play the guitar. Fast forward and now you’ve got all these guitar players who have this self-entitlement who think they’re supposed to be making millions of dollars because they can play a fucking guitar. Fuck you guys and you’ve fucking guitar. This is music and it’s to communicate. This industry is bullshit so let it die. The sooner it dies the sooner it can get back to the source of communication that it’s supposed to be.
But it’s not just technology because you can’t just have the technology, you still have to have the audience. The industry pretends like the audience is disappearing because people aren’t buying records anymore. That’s not true it’s actually fucking growing. There used to be people who would get in car and turn on the radio and not really care what was playing; they’d just get in the fucking car and turn on the radio to give them something to listen to to get to work and come home. Now in these cars there’s satellite radio and people dictate what type of music they surround their day with. They’re picking it themselves in a way that’s never been done before. What’s really happening is that the concept of ‘this is what you’re supposed to like’ is going away and that’s what pissing off everyone. I’m all for it, fuck it, let it go away because that shit never fed me anyway. What feeds me is what I put into it, period. I might not sell a million records but I’m gonna sell a bunch of t-shirts or I’m going to sell a book or I’m going to show up and you’re going to give me a bowl of soup and a pillow to put my head on. Whatever we gotta do is what we gonna do.
