MC: So Atmosphere was DIY before it was mandatory.
Slug: It was really like everybody was part of the DIY and it worked well for a few years like that. We were able to build small audiences in small markets in pockets of the country that weren’t necessarily known for even having the major acts come through. And then people started to hold us up and say, “thanks for coming.” It became this personal experience.
I realized there were pockets like this all over the country we needed to focus on. Boise, Madison, all these towns that Ludacris ain’t gonna [play]. That became our bread and butter.
MC: Would that work for hip-hop acts today?
Slug: You know I would love to say that. I would love to write a book about everything I did. I just feel like things change every few years. But I don’t know if things that we did would still be applicable to now.
MC: What’s changed?
Slug: I don’t even necessarily know that a lot of the new artists are as focused on just going out to play shows blindly like we were. There are so many other ways to get into people’s pockets and ear holes now. We didn’t have YouTube back then. We didn’t have Twitter, we didn’t have such easy access to let people know about us—we literally had to show up in your town. [It was] 1996… I mean, the Internet was alive but we didn’t know what it was.
But I was never good at taking advice from people before me [anyway]. I would look at what they’re saying and be like, “Man that’s outdated advice.” I was trying to get in the demo game, which was dead, but all of my hero’s played the demo game but you couldn’t do that anymore in ‘96.
MC: So over the years your career clearly expanded. Along with that came some unique placements, like early Tony Hawk video games and a somewhat recent MLB 2K soundtrack. How did those come up?
Slug:It happens through establishing a relationship with people in that industry. The first time we got pulled into a game was, I think, through Epitaph. They had a relationship with [the game creators] and they got us into Tony Hawk, which opened up that industry to us. Like, “Oh, they’ll give us their music for free.” I mean really that’s what it comes down to, because you had artists that were [expecting something] for their tracks. We said, “Yo just put us in there and don’t even trip.” We just wanted the exposure.
MC: Does that still work?
Slug: I don’t know for sure whether or not we still give them away for free but I know that the relationship has been established now to the point where it’s comfortable for them to come to us and go, “Hey you got a song that we can throw in here?” ... It goes back to the fact that we never spent our first 10 years trying to squeeze the pennies out of the rock but instead just going, “Here, take this,” ‘cuz we just wanted exposure.
MC: Atmosphere basically embraced pirating too, right?
Slug: That was a huge, huge part of what got us to where we are. The fact that I did embrace the Internet, I embraced downloading. I embraced all that because it was just like, to me, “Hey whatever it takes to get me in your town. So if that means you gotta bootleg my shit and give it to all your friends, do that! In fact, I might even send it to you to make sure you give it to everybody, you know?”
MC:So let’s talk Southsiders. One may notice a major shift back to hip-hop production, where The Family Sign had more live instrumentation.
Slug: Well sure, Family Sign was something that had to be done. We had spent a few years playing on the road with a live band and we had reached a point within that and our relationship with them we both felt like hey let’s include these guys into the full process, so they can feel like a part of it other then just being “guns for hire.” And I feel like we successfully achieved what it was that we were going for with that record. It was kinda like just to keep evolving. I think we toured [with a band] for like seven years, and I’m pretty sure seven is the magic number anyways so it was time to change that up. Now I got two DJs and, do you remember Main Source? When they had the two DJs and Large Professor?
MC: Of course. “Fakin’ The Funk” has never felt more relevant as it does today.
Slug: Nobody has really explored that [dual DJ approach] recently. Now you have all these toys for DJs to play with and all these new things that DJs can do. There were days when the DJ was literally just a drummer. Now the DJ can be a drummer, a horn player, a fuckin’ vocalist, whatever. We have all these different gadgets on the stage with us. Between Ant and Plain Ole Bill on stage DJing (Atmosphere’s other touring DJ), they’re able to not be so linear.
