ARTIST: Atmosphere
ALBUM: Southsiders
LABEL: Rhymesayers Entertainment
RELEASE DATE: May 6, 2014
Rap Craftsman
Written by Jeremy Weeden
Underground hip-hop duo Atmosphere is back with their new album, Southsiders. The formula is still the same, Slug on the mic and Ant on the boards for their 8th studio album. With a nice blend of storytelling from Slug and well-crafted beats from Ant, the duo look to continue their underground run.
Southsiders begins with “Camera Thief” a well-produced song with no hook. Slugs looks back over his life and some of his regrets as he raps “I keep my dreams inside my dreams/And If I had a time machine/I’d probably use it like a vacuum and try to clean/It kinda seems, quite more than a handful of these regrets have been circumstantial.”
“Arthur’s Song” is about Slug’s alcohol addiction, the song’s first words are “sippin on that brown stuff,” and how he uses music to cope with it. He delves into his thoughts for the listener with lines like “Got love for my people that survive the blizzard/But it’s a flood of liquor on my side of the river/We face pain with pain/Everybody’s the same/Waiting caught in the rain/I guess that’s why I write about it/It help me wrap my head around it/No matter what the worlds tryna take from you/No matter what the world’s tryna make you prove/No matter what the world’s tryna say to you/You gotta write your way through.”
“I Love You Like a Brother” features a piano melody with a heavy bass line underneath it. Slug raps to his friends as the hook goes “I love you like a brother/Even though I’m not your brother/We all got a few flaws/But let’s try not to get too lost in the applause/I love you like a sister/Even though you’re not my sister/We all got a few flaws/But let’s try not to get too lost.”
“Southsiders,” the title track, features a rock-tinged beat with a guitar riff and a nice boom bap drum underneath it. Slug raps about the duo’s hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota. “Bitter” is about Slug and Ant’s former friends who were jealous of the two’s success and became bitter and miserable because of it.
“Mrs. Interpret” is a shrewd song about Slug’s inability to communicate with the opposite sex. Over a jazz influenced beat he raps “And then she asked me if I caught a single thing she said/I involuntarily nodded my head/Honestly I did hear your actual voice/But the words blended in with the background noise/I must’ve got lost in my mind somehow/And now I’m too far behind to try and figure it out/The fact is I don’t know what you’re talking about/And I’m distracted by the gymnastics up in your mouth/Truthfully it’s not you, it’s me.”
Slug gives a heartfelt tribute to his fallen comrade, fellow Minnesota rapper Eyedea. Slug really opens his heart and the raw emotion behind his lyrics can be felt by the listener.
“Let Me Know That You Want It” is the closest thing on Southsiders to a radio single. The song features a catchy hook and upbeat production. Slug touches on his own mortality in the song with the lyrics like “Get a taste of your soul when you hold breath/We act like we got a whole lot of road left/So don’t mind if I drive with the top down/Let me know that you know what you want now.”
Things start to wind down with the melodic relaxing “Hell,” a clever catchy track about hell on earth. Slug raps “Hell’s not under the ground, hell’s all around/So either you didn’t know or you didn’t care/But I was in hell when you told me to go there.”
Southsiders is a good underground hip-hop album. Atmosphere has a formula that works, they stuck with it and the results are mostly pleasing. Longtime Atmosphere fans will definitely enjoy Southsiders and the duo’s laid back, stripped down style may be a fresh air to younger listeners.