San Francisco Music News

Life Gave Atmosphere Lemons, They Gave Us Gold

Slug and Ant have done it again. The latest release from Atmosphere (the hip-hop group that the MC/producer pair compile) entitled When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold sets the bar pretty freakin’ high in the hip-hop spectrum in more than a few aspects. Fans have been waiting for a new album since 2005 and both Ant and Slug have improved exponentially as artists and it is showcased by this album – everything you thought was great about Atmosphere before is even greater in When Life Gives You Lemons…
Track after track, Ant’s beats and rhythms compliment Slug’s rhyme style while simultaneously keeping the listener guessing. He uses heavy, almost techno beats as on Can’t Break but then slows it down on Yesterday and adds some accents that make the track feel, for lack of a better word, comforting. Ant samples Gladys Knight and the Pips in Yesterday to add a lot of funk and soul to a track that oozes that same soul and honesty in its lyrics. On Guarantees, the two switch up the sound again with an intimate session with only Slug’s flawless rhymes and an accompanying guitar. My personal favorites on the album, Your Glasshouse, Puppets and In Her Music Box, continue with Ant’s genius use of synthesizers, well timed additional vocals and sound effects and the new implication of live instruments.
Despite Ant’s creativity melodically, the most remarkable aspect of this album is by far Slug’s obvious progression as a lyricist, no scratch that, as a writer. He is no longer just crafting rhymes and verses but stories and timelines. It’s extremely impressive once you consider that he didn’t even start out as an emcee but as a DJ. Slug has always been pinned as the man who writes about and directly from his life (which is impressive in itself and almost unnerving to know that he has endured enough life, love, stress and setbacks to make upwards of about 20 studio albums, EPs, live releases and collaborations in 10 years). But on this record, Slug leaves that trait behind and instead weaves completely fictional stories into the album’s 15 tracks (not only the album either, buy the deluxe album and check out the children’s story Slug penned as well). This new approach creates the feeling that Slug is trying to teach himself lessons through his lyrics rather than solely educating the listener. Almost all the tracks are laced with the toils of parenting – and noticeably Slug’s frustration and confusion at how to care for his own son. In fact these issues with parenting seem to have subdued the ever present animosity towards females that Slug has never been all too good at hiding and that typically dictate his tracks. He addresses these issues in manners and ways that cause you to yank your hair in disbelief and say “How the hell did he come up with that line?! That clever son of a bitch…” Just to give an example, on the track Shoulda Known he says

I’ve got a restraining order on Satan’s daughter and t I keep it at the bottom of this Jameson and Water.

This line is so essentially Slug it’s ridiculous – what with feminizing Satan while concurrently hinting at his own flaws in his whiskey drink. The song not only reveals hishoughts on this unknown character that he “shoulda known better than to fuck with” but he also shows his poor judge of character while making a quasi public service announcement for an anti-drug campaign.

With When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold Atmosphere is undoubtedly switching it up in true Atmospheric style. They have grown to be considered the hip-hop group that is taking hip-hop to other levels, other aspects and areas of music by sounding so unique. What is great about this latest album is that it stays so quintessentially Atmosphere but it works on so many more levels. The sounds in this album are more layered, the beats more thumping, the lyrics more soulful and the album as a whole maturing at the same pace as Slug and Ant. I don’t know what it is that life gave them, but they definitely painted that shit gold.