​Documenting Atmosphere

HPR chats with Slug of the hip-hop duo Atmosphere

By Sabrina Hornung

sabrina@hpr1.com

When Sean Daley, also known as Slug, the voice of Twin Cities-based hip hop duo Atmosphere and co-founder of rap label Rhymesayers was growing up, he said hip-hop was the “large tool in my toolbox of socializing.” Whether it was breakdancing, graffiti or being a fan of the sound, he knew it was not his parents’ music and it was a movement that he felt belonged solely to those kids. High Plains Reader had the opportunity to chat with Slug about Midwestern innovation and the power of authenticity, just in time for the duo's Fargo show on August 8.

HPR: You were featured in the New York Times “50 Rappers 50 Stories” as part of a celebration of 50 years of hip hop last year. How did that feel?

Slug: To be on that list for the reason that I ended up on that list was probably the best thing that anybody could have ever told me. You're on this list because another artist wanted you to be on the list. And takes me back to the early days of me rapping when, you know, I didn't mention it.

But, just as important as feeling this like suddenly I'm likable by people like girls, I always wanted to impress other rappers. I wanted other rappers to think I was good at this. That was always a thing to be, you know, celebrated by your colleagues and so, like I said, to have another rapper speak about that, to me, to this guy, that that was super validating.

So, just my inclusion in that is probably much more important to me than my audience would ever consider. You know, I think my audience probably sees me as someone who doesn't necessarily deliberate the limelight. I'm never really shoving my nose into spaces to try to get on the red carpet or any of that. I've always kind of steered away from all that, and so me showing up in that might have been almost weird. But also, I do think my audience was also kind of proud that I was suddenly in this list of much bigger names. But the reason that the avenue of how I ended up there, that's the part that was kind of special to me.

HPR: I mean… I was really proud to see that you're part of that list. What a way to represent the Midwest, you know? The writer made their list based on the most popular, influential, and most provocative rappers. And Minneapolis is kind of known for its spirit of innovation.

Slug: I feel like there's a self-taught vibe here, which is why everybody's music sounds a little different from here. And I'm not saying that in a bragging way. It's just the truth. And then if that difference can be the thing that the artist uses to separate themselves from the pack, it can be celebrated.

So with Prince, this shit was just a little bit different than Rick James. It was a little weirder, not necessarily freakier, but just a little more androgynous, a little bit more acoustic, a little bit…It just was not what you were expecting from the funk world. And here comes Prince with that.

Everybody was like, “Oh, it's punk funk.” And it's like, well, that's not really the case. There's not a lot, a whole lot of punk going on in Prince's shit. But if you need to call it that, to find a place to file it at the record store, cool. But the truth is, it was self-taught funk. But once the masses recognize it’s special, then it becomes its own thing. But prior to the masses recognizing this, you have people from the Twin Cities in the Midwest at large, in their garages or basements, teaching themselves how to do this incorrectly.

Those incorrect characteristics, I think, help set it apart, so that if it works, then you suddenly have your own sound. And I’ve seen that in the stuff that my producer Ant created, my partner in crime and Atmosphere’s other half. He was working with a lot of rappers back in the day, it wasn't just me. The ones that eventually really stuck with them were me and Brother Ali.

You know, if you were to take the records he produced from us and compare them to the other records that were coming out in 2002 you're gonna hear a very different snare. He wanted to make records that sounded like Mobb Deep records. These are just the records that he made trying to do that, and those individual characteristics that we get wrong sometimes play into what establishes how people see us as different — even though it may have been an accident in the moment, or it may have just been my lack of understanding how to properly do overdubs that made my overdubs sound super desperate all the time.

That's what stood out in comparing me to other rappers at the time. It's weird as I look back on some of those old records. Like, they're just full of mistakes, but the audience hears those old records and what they hear are the characteristics of the individual. I'm not going to complain — I'm happy that anybody noticed, but it is a Minneapolis thing, I think. And I see it and hear it in a lot of the bands that come out of here.

HPR: Have you ever considered yourself a poet?

Slug: I don't consider myself a poet. I've never studied poetry. I've never really even been a huge fan of reading it.

I appreciated Bukowski at a young age, that got me into Fante, I liked that particular publishing house and here and there, you know… Ezra Pound, or, you know, certain things have crossed my desk. But mostly not based on their ability to write, but more so based on what they chose to write about.

And so, no, I don't consider myself a poet. Never studied poetry much — like, I would feel awkward if a poet were to try to convince themselves that they were also a rapper just because they were a poet, I feel like there's certain dues that you should pay to be classified as a poet. I know poets, many of them, and they've all paid those dues. They've put in that work, they've spoken in front of crowds and read their work and established that type of rhythm....

I've studied rap, and I studied it my whole life, and so I'm confident in calling myself a rapper. But I'm not confident to call myself a poet.

HPR: That makes sense. Would you consider yourself more of a storyteller?

Slug: I've never written anything that I would call a story. I write raps that sometimes tell stories, but mostly tell my story.

So if anything, if I had to pick another title aside from rapper or songwriter, I would probably consider myself a documentarian, I guess — an autobiographical documentarian. I document my life, my thoughts, even the stories that I write are still observations based on…I do not separate myself from what I'm writing, and so I would be hesitant to even consider myself a storyteller. In that regard, I freestyle bedtime stories for my kids, and I've gotten good at, you know, story arc, conflict resolution, even in those stories. But even that, to me, is connected to what I do on stage. So even that, I still think is based in rapping and songwriting.

HPR: Sharing those personal anecdotes, I think that's probably one of the reasons why your fans connect so deeply with you, because it's something that they can relate to, and it just adds a nice personal connection.

Slug: I think that at the core of me there's a lawyer (probably a defense lawyer), because at the core of me, I want to argue with people and debate people and convince people of something. And so I think that pre-rap, that's the core, and then I apply those traits to the rapping.

So therefore, the most important part of any of my songs is probably authenticity, whether or not the listener hears it or feels it. That's what I'm attempting. And sometimes you want to express an idea that you might not even fully believe yourself, because it's just a notion or a theory or an idea, but you still want to express it as authentically as possible. And so that's probably why my mom always would tease me and tell me that I'm still trying to be a lawyer — the authenticity side of that.

I think if we had to, like if I was in therapy right now, really trying to figure myself out… if this was a session, I think that this is where we would get to eventually — that my strength and my weaknesses is authenticity.

HPR: I don't think that that's weak at all. I think that that seems like a strength, but I guess I'm not a therapist.

Slug: I think anything that is a strength is also a weakness. That's why I say that. And so I think that when you strengthen something, it's because you are trying to change the weakness.

You know… there's a balance there, if you're trying to acquire muscle mass, the reason you're doing that is because you are trying to oppose weakness. If you're trying to reinforce a bridge, it's because you know that there's some weaknesses there that you need to address. So I do think if you are trying to apply authenticity to something, it's because you can see that it's lacking authenticity, or that you're maybe even insecure about its space. I try to be as intentional as possible with the words that I choose — which is also probably a sign of strength and weakness.

IF YOU GO:

Atmosphere

August 8, 6:45 p.m.

UP District Festival Field

1329 5th Avenue N, Fargo

https://jadepresents.com/event/2024-atmosphere-fargo/