Atmosphere - When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint that Shit Gold
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Atmosphere :: When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold Rhymesayers Reviewed on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 by Alex Dweezy Dwyer What makes a good father? Are they protective? Providing? Or on some “the world doesn’t revolve around you” shit? What’s this have to do with Atmosphere’s fifth studio full length? Everything.
Over two years and one album ago, in an URB cover story Slug said, “I could never really understand rap cats with kids that make shit their own kids can’t listen to.” Besides the self-authored children’s book that accompanies the record and its beautifully expensive artwork/packaging, the cliché flipped title and the music box intro/outro, there are 56 references to parenthood that tumble out of Slug’s mouth. As the duo Warp-toured their “emo-hop” into the hearts of strip-mall suburbinagers during the last decade, their parenting-musicians role has grown and so have they.
On this one, Slug shatters his “#1 Dad” mug over status-quo rap un-creatives, exposing mediocre rappers with images of singing cigarettes, pupil marbles and lunchmeat swallowin’. Always an expert in self-psychoanalytic poetics, Slug’s rhymes swim in his traditional content pool: “I’ve got a restraining order against Satan’s daughter/And I keep it at the bottom of this Jameson and water.” Yet, he steers his delivery into a relaxed, confident charisma that carries the serene “Like The Rest of Us,” the synth-rampant “Wild Wild Horses,” and the powerful “Puppets.”
Ever the “tangler of the strings of the puppetry,” Atmosphere has always adhered to a strict realist, no frontin,’ parental advice policy with first-person life anti-lessons about boobs, Beamers and booze. Ant’s beat backdrops are free of scratches, samples or skits, as he’s elected instead to experiment with synths, acoustic guitars and pianos. It’s refreshing through 12 tracks but flops hard on the fraggle-rocky “You,” where Slug also¤s...
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