Having never listened to these guys before, my ears pricked up when I heard this album playing in the background of the office, Slugs smooth rhymes and Ants musicality caught my attention and immediately got my head nodding.
The long standing underground hip hop duo Atmosphere are back with their sixth release, When Life gives you Lemons, You paint that shit gold.
However, a solid listen to their catchy tunes revealed a deep and very dark subject matter. Slugs main choice of subject revolves around doing shit we probably shouldn’t such as binge drinking, coke and drug addiction, stripping and under age pregnancies. Throughout the album he tells stories of the beaten man, the underdog, the teenage fuck up that does the hard yards and has the hand to mouth struggle, all framed within a working class background. Dreamer for example is a tale about a young mother trying to battle against the odds of working full time while supporting a dead beat dad and two kids. In the song Shoulda Known we hear an almost autobiographical account of drug addiction, and its deep, dark, seedy under belly, Slug seems to be singing about how drugs had him in its clasp. Again on Your Glasshouse we hear about the state of a hangover we’ve all experienced, it has dark heavy synths over Slug’s questions about how you ended up in a strange toilet with spew all over you.
Ants production on this album acts as a contrast to the always dark subject matter, he introduces, jazzy style pianos, lazy slide guitar riffs and cheeky flutes to lighten the heavy sombre and un sober mood of Slugs rhymes. Such aural cleverness features in songs such as the bouncey You and Painting.
The track that caught my attention as it veered away from the above formula was The Skinny as it adopted a G- Funk synth kind of sound lathered with a heavy Slick Rick influenced style of story telling and rhyme. Here Slug leaves the blue -collar theme and heads toward the gangsta genre of singing about a skinny white pimp, maybe paying homage to a IceBerg Slim story.
Over all the album is solid and thanks to Ant’s production keeps it fun, catchy and one to keep in the work stereo. Go get it.
The long standing underground hip hop duo Atmosphere are back with their sixth release, When Life gives you Lemons, You paint that shit gold.
However, a solid listen to their catchy tunes revealed a deep and very dark subject matter. Slugs main choice of subject revolves around doing shit we probably shouldn’t such as binge drinking, coke and drug addiction, stripping and under age pregnancies. Throughout the album he tells stories of the beaten man, the underdog, the teenage fuck up that does the hard yards and has the hand to mouth struggle, all framed within a working class background. Dreamer for example is a tale about a young mother trying to battle against the odds of working full time while supporting a dead beat dad and two kids. In the song Shoulda Known we hear an almost autobiographical account of drug addiction, and its deep, dark, seedy under belly, Slug seems to be singing about how drugs had him in its clasp. Again on Your Glasshouse we hear about the state of a hangover we’ve all experienced, it has dark heavy synths over Slug’s questions about how you ended up in a strange toilet with spew all over you.
Ants production on this album acts as a contrast to the always dark subject matter, he introduces, jazzy style pianos, lazy slide guitar riffs and cheeky flutes to lighten the heavy sombre and un sober mood of Slugs rhymes. Such aural cleverness features in songs such as the bouncey You and Painting.
The track that caught my attention as it veered away from the above formula was The Skinny as it adopted a G- Funk synth kind of sound lathered with a heavy Slick Rick influenced style of story telling and rhyme. Here Slug leaves the blue -collar theme and heads toward the gangsta genre of singing about a skinny white pimp, maybe paying homage to a IceBerg Slim story.
Over all the album is solid and thanks to Ant’s production keeps it fun, catchy and one to keep in the work stereo. Go get it.
![ISSUE 6 - [ S P A C E ]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LyDzdFim_9o/SLIBSjasE2I/AAAAAAAAAGU/zpCaZj-m9jE/S220/6_cover.jpg)
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