Hey, are those organic? Atmosphere's Anthony "Ant" Davis and Sean "Slug" Daley
(Credit: Dan Monick)
“Please don’t print that,” he says after one particularly colorful one-liner during our interview. “I apologize. That was a joke. I don’t want to offend women.”
With the help of his trusty pal Anthony “Ant” Davis, Slug has churned out a mind-blowing—and, more than occasionally, offensive—truckload of indie-hop classics since his group's debut in 1993, including their latest, "When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold." Whether he’s hammering mainstream hip-hop or ranting about his nemesis “Lucy Ford” (who may be an ex-girlfriend, a metaphor for all of hip-hop, or just his cat), Slug wields words like weaponry over Ant’s stark beats. Or, he can just rip a joke with the best of them, especially when he's his own target. Which is often.
Metromix got in line to chat with the Minneapolis-based rapper about Atmosphere’s new album and having a little fun at the expense of the music journalists.
Have you been on the interview trail all day?
Yes, I have. That's a great name for it. I'm going to use it from now on.
Sweet. Well, I'll try not to ask you a question you've already been asked.
Let's do it! We'll play a game. What do I get if I've heard the question?
I'll buy ten copies of the deluxe edition of “When Life Gives You Lemons” for my friends.
That sounds cool. What do you get?
I get the interview.
That's not fair for you. You know what? I don't want to play this game. I suck at games.
Fair enough. Since you're Slug and Anthony is Ant, have you ever considered entomophagy?
Wow, I've never heard of that shit. I'm so glad we didn't play this game.
It's a health food trend: eating bugs. They're supposed to be good for you.
Yeah sure, I guess. I'm a pretty old-school dude. I do things out of necessity. I never say never. If it reaches that point, then yeah. But I won't do it just for a better stomach.
I'm interested in your thoughts on downloads. You released your last album, "Strictly Leakage," as a free download, but then refused to send out press advances for "When Life Gives You Lemons."
C'mon man, you have enough CDs sitting in your office. You don't need another. Let's be real: talking about your record is so 2003. For this one, we put together crazy listening sessions. In Los Angeles, we threw a party where we played the record and a contest where we drove journalists around in a rented minivan. It was more fun for everybody because they got to see what an idiot I am. Plus, listening to a CD in your car is so much better than listening at home where your cat is vomiting.
That sounds awesome. Did you do that everywhere?
New York is the one city where we didn't do it. Instead, we rented a boardroom and invited journalists there, while I drew custom tattoos for every one of them. Stuff like that. One of a kind tattoo designs by Slug.
Is that the session where Boston's Weekly Dig reported you as saying that by the time your next album comes out, "If I'm not rich, I'll show up at the next listening party with a bomb and take all of you motherfuckers out"?
I can't believe I said that. What an asshole Slug is. His self-entitlement is out of control. The honest truth is that our main motive was making it fun. Leaks were a minor part of it. I mean, this is not our breakout record. We were a buzz band for 17 years. At this point, it is what it is.
You seem like a guy who can have fun pretty easily.
I learned a lot from this run, and I'm going to apply it. I showed up at all these things with lemon cake or lemonade. We painted lemons gold and hid them in journalists' backpacks. The person doing the bag check put them in, which I'm sure is illegal. Out of all them, there has got to be one journalist who didn’t find the lemon until it started to rot.
Rap guys having fun at journalists' expense.
Exactly! It's all face time in a magazine. It's not free. I gotta pay an email publicist an arm and a leg. It seems like 90 percent of publicists are women, but most of the journalists are men.
That's an interesting take on gender in marketing and music.
It's just selling sex. I strongly believe that's what all art is: selling sex. It's a language that some people know how to speak. If your art is good, you widen your pool of choices of people you can have babies with.
Your hometown, Minneapolis, is the birthplace of both Hüsker Dü and Prince. So where does Atmosphere fit in?
When people see me, they probably think I look like Hüsker Dü. But when I look in the mirror, I see Prince.
