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how atmosphere's slug became my feminist icon - rebecca moss lyrics

when i was 16, my friends and i took a road trip to denver to see the minneapolis-based, hip hop group atmosphere for the second time. it was hot and we dressed in crop tops and low rise jeans. we brought black sharpie markers and after the show waited in line for frontman slug’s autograph. we decided we would have him sign the exposed skin just above our belly b-ttons so we could wear his tattooed script like a badge of honor. but when the girl in front of us asked him to sign her br–sts, he vehemently rejected her: “i don’t do that anymore,” he said. “i won’t write on women’s bodies.”

he offered her a paper autograph instead. we saved ourselves the embarr-ssment and asked for the same. when i got home i pinned it to my bulletin board and i still have that piece of paper somewhere. growing up in santa fe, committing atmosphere lyrics to memory was a rite of p-ssage akin to breaking curfew and getting drunk on mike’s hard lemonade on the football field with the senior boys

at the time, atmosphere—also composed of dj/producer ant (anthony davis)—was considered underground. in 2004, the radio had a penchant for popular tracks like snoop dogg and pharrell’s “drop it like it’s hot” (sample lyric: “i’m a bad boy, with a lotta hoes/ see i specialize in making all the girls get naked”) and ludacris’ “fantasy” (the tamest line: “i want to l1ck, l1ck, l1ck you from your head to your toes”). and while we sung along to those songs before we were fully able to ingest the meaning, we were influenced by the message in those lyrics: in mainstream hip hop, women were, and continue to be, objects of s-xual fantasy and pleasure for men

slug’s lyrics told a different story, however. in his early records, overcast! (1997) and lucy ford (2001), he painted himself as the well-intended but quick-to-fail antihero in love (and sometimes at war) with a woman named lucy

the woman with the tattooed hands, one of his earliest and more well-known tracks, tells the story of twin tattoos of the female form that come to life in a dark bedroom. slug explains that forces of good and evil are contained deep inside a woman’s body: “as she gently bites her bottom lip” [read: within the act of m-st-rbation]. and then: “i stepped, i left, and i don’t regret leaving/ and i’ll never forget all the things i saw that evening/ a glimpse of religion, a piece of coming closer/ to understanding more about what intrigues me most/ i didn’t get turned on, i just got turned.”

the stories told in atmosphere songs are complex. within them, female s-xuality is not an object but rather something more powerful than what is usually granted to women in mainstream rap. while a man’s voice remains the messenger, the women created are fully-fleshed, sometimes dangerous, and fully independent

this may, more than 12 years since i first learned the story of the woman with the tattooed hands, atmosphere released their sixth studio album, southsiders. to mark the occasion, i sat with sean daley (slug) in a dimly lit dressing room at the highline ballroom in new york city. daley, who is 42, is tall, with a wide mouth, sunken eyes, and wild black hair. his face is etched with pockmarks and he wears a small tuft of facial hair just below his bottom lip

“most of my albums come from a place of—i don’t want to say blue collar, because i’m not like the springsteen of rap or no sh-t like that—but more from a place of work ethic,” he said. “my work ethic has always been stronger than my talent level.”

daley was born in the south central region of minneapolis, a working cl-ss, “integrated” neighborhood, with mostly single-parent homes. his mother was 16 when daley was born and dropped out of high school to raise him; his parents separated with he was 11, and daley was tasked with the responsibility of helping his mother raise his two little brothers. he worked as a deliveryman before gaining recognition for his music in his early twenties just after his first son, jacob, was born. much of his music comes from using rap to work through the chaos of this period

“there is a beautiful ident-ty inside of being an underground rapper. the underdog is an amazing position: you are a victim and a hero all at the same time,” daley said. he paused before adding, “i don’t feel like a victim anymore.”

downstairs, a diverse audience, from teenagers to thirty-somethings, had already started filtering in to see the sold out show. on facebook, atmosphere has over one million fans, and if you ask daley, his core audience lives in small, mid-west cities (like santa fe and minneapolis). however, in the 17 years since the group released their first album, they have cultivated a band of devotees who don’t just like atmosphere, they ingest it like a religion. it was atmosphere that the teenagers of the real “bling ring” (made famous by the sofia coppola film), were actually listening to when they drove around los angeles plotting how to rob paris hilton. at music festivals, atmosphere shows draw m-ssive crowds—often twice the audience of the radio-approved headline bands

now with six albums and 10 eps released to date, daley has a successful record label—rhymesayers—which represents 36 other increasingly mainstream rappers such as p.o.s., aesop rock, and mf doom. in 2008, the label founded the first ever all-rap music festival, soundset, based in minneapolis. this year’s festival was headlined by some of the larger names in rap: wiz khalifa, nas, 2 chainz, and cypress hill. atmosphere tracks have even crept into television: “bad, bad, daddy,” was featured on a recent episode of the netflix series orange is the new black

“rule number one with the kind of music i make: you have to represent where you are from” he said

his latest, southsiders, is a call out to the blue collar town that raised him. each track opens with a cool female voice announcing a different stop on a public transportation line in minneapolis—but it has a slower pace than the addictive beats distinctive to atmosphere’s sound. slug remains the well-intentioned but ill-mannered protagonist, contemplating the nature of man and drinking too much, but now, as he says in “camera thief,” “i still kick it with angels/ the difference is that instead of the bar i’m at my kitchen table.”

he lives in minneapolis with his wife and three sons; the youngest, age 4, just learned the f-word by singing along to his father’s new album. the rapper cites writer charles bukowski (“i liked to drink and so therefore i was a fan”) and joan didion (he is currently reading the year of magical thinking) among his favorite authors; big daddy kane, scarface, and dem atlas are among his musical influences

“i’m a humanist and you can’t be that without being a feminist,” said daley. “you can’t have one without the other.”

on southsiders, tracks like “kanye west” call out a level of devotion to the woman in his life: “she say she needed something that she can blame/ and right then is when i offered my name”—mirrored by few other male rappers

“i sometimes wonder if people think i was living on some extreme edge,” daley said, referring to the invocations of s-x, alcohol abuse, and depression depicted throughout his musical canon. but he is adamant that his tracks are part fact, part fiction—often elaborate narratives about grand themes worked out through words. the early character of lucy ford from his second album (or lucifer), for example, was never a real person

“technically i was lucy. when i wrote ‘lucy,’ i wrote about my issues, my codependencies, my bullsh-t. i wrote about it in a way that allowed me to have a back and forth with somebody,” said daley

as a result, there is an empathy expressed through the characters in his music that makes them come alive—not because they are beautiful or s-xy—but because they are flawed. it is this quality that has allowed slug to endure as the underdog icon despite his success

“there is a flip side to everything, even the positive things,” said daley

like slug, we could all benefit from spending a little more time living in the same skin as our demons—our own personal lucy fords

southsiders is available now

- rebecca moss lyrics

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