Marcel Friday

ALBUM REVIEW: Atmosphere – Fishing Blues

Originally posted on HipHopDX 8/26/2016
Rating: 3.5/5

For Slug and Ant, the past 19 years in the game since releasing their first album in 1997 have cumulated into tremendous success. The Godfathers of the everyman rap genre have amassed a cult following and continue to define what independent success can look like. They’ve taken their own Rhymesayers Entertainment imprint to the next level with their own major festival, Soundset Music Festival, in their native of Minnesota. The duo has signed former major label acts such as Freeway and Dilated Peoples to releasing two Billboard 200 Top 10 charting albums. Now, after a two-year hiatus, Atmosphere is back with their latest album Fishing Blues.

Slug has carved out a very long, successful career over the emotive, mood enhanced and melancholy instrumentation of Ant’s production. The album opens up with “Ringo,” a cheeky 50’s, All-American inspired production that displays Slug reminiscing about summer days in the Twin Cities. On the flip side, he’s able to capture the angst of an entire society fed up with police violence with “Pure Evil.” Over a soundbed that could have been taken from a Django monologue, Slug tells the story of a killer cop through the eyes of the cop as the chorus chants, “I don’t believe you, this is pure evil.”