Atmosphere's emcee Slug

Rather than floss in a Bentley flashing bling surrounded by rented, bikini-clad hoochies, Slug tends to stick to the jeans-and-T-shirt style. Rather than rap about bitches, 40s and gats, Slug's delivery and lyrical content tend to be a bit more insightful and intelligent, personal and introspective.

Slug, however, is hesitant to accept the role of hero at the head of the indie rap pack, presenting himself instead as a self-assured but slightly socially insecure person, a vibe that comes across unmistakably in his music. As he explains from his home in Minneapolis, he just kind of does his thing. Everything that comes with success has to be taken in stride.

Q: A popular Slug story is how you came out of a broken home in Minneapolis, and your rhymes seem like they could be rooted in that kind of past. Is that when or why you started rhyming?

Slug: I doubt it. I think I was just influenced by friends, by my surroundings. But we had a very Neanderthal-like hip-hop movement going on here. Of course, we were about five years behind the East Coast, but those of us who got into it here in the mid-'80s got into it hardcore. We were total fanatics; we were like the Trekkie convention of hip-hop. We learned and mastered all four elements and even tried to make up a couple of new elements just so we could say we did our part. Like, anything, man - 'The fifth element of hip-hop is marketing! No wait, the fifth element of hip-hop is oral sex!' I mean anything. So basically, I can break, I can paint, I can rap, I can, um...drive a car.

Q: Out of all four elements, what about rapping made you concentrate on the mic rather than on the dance floor or the sides of train cars?

Slug: It was the only one that I was really good at. It was my last choice, actually. I started off breakin', and I can do it, but then I discovered graffiti and thought, 'Well, I can break, but I can draw my ass off.' So I decided that I was gonna get into graffiti 'cause I was never really that tight of a dancer, like I never learned how to spin on my face or any of that kinda shit. But I also always bought records, and one day I thought, 'You know what, man, these graf kids are on some next-level shit and I'm not even gonna try to keep up with them. I know, I'll be a DJ!' Actually, I was the DJ for Atmosphere when we started out, I wasn't the MC, that was Spawn. As time went on, I started rapping with him and we started using other people as DJs, and then he left the group and now I pretty much just rap. Once in a while, just for fun to impress all the nine-year-olds on my block, I pull out the cardboard and bust a couple of moves out front here. I go see my chiropractor right after that.

Q: People say that the scene in Minneapolis is great, if you can stand the winter.

Slug: Keep away, man, it's my secret garden! But yeah, if you can handle the winters, it is the place to live, and I stand firmly by that...but stay away man, these are my women.

Q: [Fellow Minneapolis musicians] Dillinger Four hails you as a key member of a big and tight-knit scene in Minneapolis, where rappers and punk rockers share stages. Is that the scene that you came up in?

Slug: That's something that I became a part of five or six years ago. Prior to that, I didn't even know that guitars even existed. Seriously, I was so hip-hop that it hurt, and I had no idea about this scene basically until I started dating white girls. That was about six or seven years ago, with my son's mom. When I started playing out in the scene here, people started noticing me and I started making friends, and before I knew it, I was going to big parties and sitting in with bands, and I realized something: There are 10 bands here that will stay solid as those 10 bands. There are another 500 hundred bands here that are gonna continue to interchange the same pieces, the same people, to make new bands every year. So it's kind of incestuous, and everybody knows you because you've either been in a band with them before or they used to fuck your girlfriend.

I noticed something else about Minneapolis then, too: Because of where we're located, the next city that's big and worth going to is Chicago, and that's seven-and-a-half hours away. Nobody's really trying to make that trek just to see Fugazi play one night, you know? So what you've got here are a buncha people who want live music and who want art in general - photographers, painters, musicians - and all they got is each other, so they got no choice but to support each other. For a while, we were really lacking in the area of national bands coming through and playing, so everybody just got really good at what they were doing here, and now we've got this self-sufficient scene that can keep everybody happy and can keep everybody working, and we'd never have to have another band come visit our town again if we didn't want them to.

The city really supports itself - and that's not just with music, but with all facets of art - and I think that stems from the fact that we really ain't got no choice. When it's winter, you're stuck inside your house for six months out of the fucking year. The other six months a year, you cut loose, go out and kick it, see the same people and make out with the same girls. It's fun, good times. And then, when I get older, I'm gonna buy a lawnmower and go door-to-door making 10 bucks a house mowing lawns.

Q: What's your neighborhood like?

Slug: Oh, it's half art fucks, half thugs. And the thugs don't fuck with the art fucks, and the art fucks don't fuck with the thugs. The art fucks continue to spread gonorrhea to each other and the thugs continue to beat the shit out of each other. Everybody just kinda handles their own shit. They know their places...we all know our place.

Q: As a member of a self-contained, artist-driven crew, do you find yourself struggling between the roles of artist and businessman?

Slug: I struggled between the two for a while, and as of this year, I'm trying to go gung-ho directly into the artist side. I still have to mind the business because as an artist, there are still things that I want to do that require money. I still have to budget my end of things to make sure that I can still release a DVD, or that I can take a trip to go rehearse or whatever. So I still have to play that game a little, but I don't even know where my record sales are at right now. That's how ignorant I've tried to keep myself. I don't want anybody to give me any information about any dollar amounts, any sales figures, deadlines - and everybody in Rhymesayers has really had my back on this. I'm blessed because everybody who understands exactly why I'm doing it is down to shelter me from the information that I don't want.

Q: In a world of bling-bling hip-hop, would you agree that one of the most attractive things about your music is that self-deprecating element, something for people who just can't relate to the whole baller / gangsta' imagery of commercial rap?

Slug: I think I'm just a sexy motherfucker...No, really I think that people being able to relate to the music is like 90 percent of it. The funny thing is, though, when I play live, I look at the crowd, and I guarantee you that I wouldn't be able to relate to probably 90 percent of them. So it's kind of interesting how a lot of people have been able to catch what I'm talking about, but when I sit and I turn it around on them, I'm usually like, 'Man, where are you coming from with this stuff?' But then, I never did like the whole patchouli thing, you know? I mean, respect is respect and I'll give you a hug and all, but do me a favor and keep your dreads out of my mouth.

But I guess the fact is that they can relate to my shit, and I think also that, as much as a lot of us don't want to discuss it, there's a big 'white' factor going on here. You know, Mr. Lif could get up and say the same shit that I'm saying, but is he gonna have those same white boys in the crowd singing along, or is it because they see a white kid doing it that they can relate to it? I just want to kick them all and say, 'Dude, I'm not even white!' In fact, let's not really talk about the race thing in this interview, by the way. I've been trying my best to not bring it up because over the last few months a lot of writers have been white-boying me.

Q: Your artistic output is so prolific. What drives you?

Slug: Art to me is just another form of communication. One that not everybody has learned. If you think about it... I don't know how to speak French, right? But I know how to draw and so it's another language. Whether it be music or film.. It's another form of communication. Communication is all about being able to work and deal with like minded individuals. But then what's the point of that? So you can build things right? But what's the point of that? So you can have a family. It's healing. It's eat, sleep, fuck. It's the survival. It's what we're here for. So, art doesn't enable some of us to sleep well at night, yes this is true. And art doesn't enable some of us to eat, yes this is true. But it enables everybody to fuck cause if you put that painting out there and if one person likes it so much that you make friends with them.. who knows. By this time next week you might get their roommate pregnant. It's just another way of bringing people together and personally bringing people together is all about procreation as far as I'm concerned.