Twin Cities duo-Atmosphere

-- Bob Longmore

For this month’s Twin Town Sound I was going to write about the new record from Atmosphere. I was going to tell you about how “You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having” is the latest in a succession of brilliant albums by the hip-hop duo. This album, like their last two albums, makes you wonder why Atmosphere isn’t on the tips of tongues of every music fan in the nation. It makes you wonder why rapper Slug isn’t on the cover of every magazine that Ludacris has graced in the past two years. It makes you wonder why producer and beat-maker Ant isn’t twiddling the knobs in every studio Kanye West has holed up in the past two years.

I was going to gush about the song “The Arrival” being the perfect album-opener and the way it explodes through your headphones with Slug declaring a mission statement in the first line of the song about rising above the mediocrity of their contemporaries, “They’ve arrived with the excitement of a newborn/come to join the main event and fight against the lukewarm.” “Smart Went Crazy” is what people love about Atmosphere. It is a song about spending too much time with yourself. I can imagine the solitary, mohawked Slug who appears on the album cover bouncing along to this song as it rolls on a loop inside his brain. In “Get Fly,” a gospel choir harmonizes over a piano riff that sounds straight from an early 80s Joe Jackson album. This is a song about keeping your head up above the emotional detritus that living produces. This sentiment segues beautifully into “Little Man” which, in its first verse, is a love letter to Slug’s son. Slug is amazingly personal when he sings, “I won’t take too much of your time/I know you’re trying to get your video game grind on/and that’s fine… /I’ve been watching you, man/and I’m proud of you, man/You’re growing up to be the best man that you possibly can.”

I was going to talk about the bubbling cauldron of rappers that are set to break through the surface and boil away all the bad hip-hop that exists today. People like Sage Francis and Atmosphere are proving that rappers can be hard and sensitive at the same time. They show that guns and Bentleys are not prerequisites to writing the kind of rhymes that could rock anyone’s head that is stuck between two iPod earbuds. I think this new breed of rappers is pushing the boundaries of what hip-hop can be, by expanding the musical tunnel vision of the “bling” crowd that permeates the radio and TV. It may be this young collection of indie-rappers that form the sharp end of the pin will burst the balloon of misogyny and materialism that defines the current landscape of rap.

I was going to talk about the Rhymesayers’ label to which Atmosphere belongs: A label that has given unprecedented credibility and exposure to Twin Cities’ hip-hop. While Atmosphere may be the biggest artist on the label, Brother Ali, Blueprint and Eyedea are just a fraction of the immense talent the label has to offer. Then, beyond Rhymesayers, there is a vibrant hip-hop community thriving in Minnesota, which is celebrated every year at the Twin Cities Celebration of Hip-Hop, and includes such artists as Heiruspecs and P.O.S.

I was going to talk about all that stuff, but then something amazing happened. I was driving north on 169 in my truck on a Monday afternoon. I was tired from a tedious day of work and looking forward to making myself a drink when I arrived home. In between the stops and starts of rush-hour traffic, a light emanated from my radio. On 89.3, The Current, a young man sang over a softly picked acoustic guitar. “I used to roam the zone with two feet of snow/Right here this used to be a record shop / I’ve gotten love, I’ve gotten drunk I’ve gotten beat up in that parking lot / I’ve had my Lake Street pride for three decades / These alleyways and these streetlights have seen my best days.”

The man on the radio was Slug, and he was singing “Always Coming Back Home to You” live in the radio studio. The song comes off Atmosphere’s album “Seven’s Travels” and I can’t remember the last time a song moved me like that, and I am the sort of person who gets moved by songs almost daily. This was a rapper singing a song with no beats, no turntables and no pretense. As my truck lurched slowly toward my destination, a disbelieving smile spread across my face. This was the best hip-hop song I had ever heard and it was also the best pop, folk, rock, blues or gospel song I had ever heard.

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