Slug. Dan Monick photo.

By Tawnya Schultz
Photos courteous of Independent Label Group

Sean Daley is a lot of things: a dad, a Minneapolis, Minnesota lifer, and a Run-DMC and KRS One fan. Not too long ago, though, Sean followed a dream—a desire to spread the message of love, life and hope. Today he’s known as Slug—the lyrically emotional and gifted front man of the independent hip-hop group Atmosphere. After starting his own label with friends some 15 years ago and with DJ/producer Ant by his side, Slug has succeeded in making his presence known on the scene thanks to his belief in his message and his undeniable stage presence. Currently working on Atmosphere’s sixth studio full-length album, Slug drops knowledge on remaining independent with big label offers on the table, the haters, and growing as a person in both music and in life.

The first time I saw you guys was at Warped Tour in 2004 randomly. I had never heard of you before, but caught you on a little side stage and I was just in awe of your stage performance. It was a really cool experience.

Slug: Are you sure it was us?

Yeah I’m pretty sure.

In what city?

It was in Ventura in California.

Awh yes I remember that Warped Tour. Iight. Well I’m glad you liked it. You were stoned probably and drunk?

No, I think I had just got there and had missed one of my friends’ band perform. I just randomly ran into you guys and was like, “Sick.”

Is there still a snowboard culture? I ask because I was a little too old for it to really grab me. I was probably in my early twenties and had a kid and was paranoid of breaking bones and things of that nature when snowboarding really hit. And then it got so big that I felt it just kind of became like skateboarding where it’s still a lifestyle I guess, but you know, the word culture seems like saying hip hop culture where it’s like “Are any of these artists still part of hip hop culture?” Or has it become such a mainstream genre or culture or movement that it’s kind of a lost culture and become more of a movement I guess would be one way to say it?

Yeah there definitely is that whole mainstream aspect to it as there is with hip hop but for example we recently put out our Buyer’s Guide and Ed Hardy is trying to make outerwear and all these core brands like DC and Burton and so many people in general are just pissed off.

Well of course they are because Ed Hardy is going to take some of their money and Ed Hardy is also going to bring more people over here that you would say aren’t “core” but you know I think a lot of that is just like identity crisis issues. I saw the same thing happen with hip hop. Let’s say for example Ed Hardy brings in their outerwear and all these little people come to [the sport] it’s also going to expose people who have never would have been exposed to these other companies and it’s going to bring possibly more [money]. It’s like they can keep making the same money off of the same group of kids forever or as these new people come in with Ed Hardy they can come in and grab some of them as well.

The thing is still to this day I meet 15-year-old kids at my shows who identify themselves with hip hop and some of them actually do know what they’re talking about. Some of them get so into it at 15 but you know that they just discovered this shit two years ago. By 17 they’ve moved beyond Atmosphere and moved in even closer into Mr. Lif or Brother Ali. It’s one of those things that maybe I’m just getting old but I’m starting to question why we made such a big fuss about the masses starting to pay attention because they can’t stop – it’s gonna happen- whether it be Ed Hardy or Target someone is going to do it. If that’s the case why don’t we reassess and reapply our focus on trying to figure out how we do the best that we can with these new people when we do get that opportunity to grab them. How do we train them correctly and how do we introduce them to more than just the girls that I hire to be in my rap video. You know what I’m sayin’?

Yeah, totally. Well that’s the thing. Target does sponsor these athletes now but they have found a way to correspond with the brands that are already out there.

I kind of unsurely used Target even though in my heart of hearts I know that Target is not a horrible corporation. They actually seem like they put a lot of effort into not stepping on people’s toes as they continue to take over the world as opposed to other corporations I guess. You know what I’m sorry-- I’m not trying to fucking hijack your interview here.

Slug and Ant. Dan Monick photo.

No, not at all. I think it’s cool you’re talking about this.

I’m usually talking to music magazines that are selling to music nerds but I have an opportunity to talk with a different type of magazine that’s selling to a different type of nerd and that’s why I’m like “Let’s really chop it up about dumb shit.” Yeah snowboard or death mother fucker.

Haha. So you’ve never tried it at all or what?

No I’ve never done it. My girlfriend came out of that. She’s a little older now but she was in to the culture so I did have a view in to it maybe not the firsthand experience but I got to see it through the eyes of a women.

That’s cool. To answer your question though there definitely is a sub culture of snowboarding and these people who are still holding on. It’s still a young sport though. – I saw a show at Mont Bleu in South Lake Tahoe with you guys more recently.

Oh yeah. That was a pretty weird show.

It was crazy. Everybody was like super hammered.

I felt like there was a desperation in the room and I don’t know if it was from my vantage point but from my vantage point I play a lot of clubs you gotta imagine and you get accustomed to standing on stage and looking at a room full of people. When you play a two hour set there’s plenty of time for a lot of stuff to start going through your head. This was a room where it felt like I was looking at a bunch of people where it felt like there were too many. It felt like they had crammed too many people into the room than there was space. It’s not really responsible for me to speak about that right there in front of a drunk audience because you don’t want to make some kid freak out and panic, especially if they’re buzzed, so it’s best just to grab the situation, hold it, make everybody smile a lot, and safely usher them out at the end of the show. That was one of those shows, I’ve had a few of them in my life, where I’m on stage like “Man I’m kind of nervous about what could happen in this fucking room right now.” And that was one of them. It was a pretty weird show.

It’s really weird to be on stage and deliver the same type of confidence and ego as well as all of the different phases you get to go through. It’s actually kind of weird to go through when you’re nervous about the safety of these 16 year old kids in the front row. It was a lot of fun though. I do remember the audience being very open to letting us do any songs we wanted to do which is cool for us because we get to go into some of the catalog and go, “Hey let’s do this one.” And what do you know they still enjoyed it. I would definitely say it was a really good time and I would love to fuckin’ come back. I just really think they would need to find a bigger room for us to play in. Get a room that’s too big so they don’t really have that kind of issue. And maybe also check id’s [Laughs]. Lots of underage kids were drunk at that show.

Um yeah, check id’s, and the thing is that it was so easy for people to sneak in and that show was sold out so that was the other issue. That’s why there were so many people probably.

I could see that. Yeah.

Are you in Minneapolis right now?

I am. I got back to Minneapolis about a day and a half ago so I’m still in the phase where I still feel like I’m just in a hotel. I still feel like I’m not here really and am managing to get comfortable in my house again.

You’ve been traveling for a while.

A little bit yeah.

So that’s where your home base is still and where your family lives and all that?

Oh yeah. I have a house here. I stay here. We have an office here. Rhymsayers lives here.

Sean Daley aka Slug

What year did you start your label, Rhymsayers Entertainment?

We made if official in 1995. Our whole career has been a series of baby steps, if that makes any sense. You know you start off as a rapper in high school and by the end of high school you’ve meet a few likeminded people either from your school or from other parts of the city and you bond with them. Then after a few years of rapping and going to shows you start trying to peruse to one another that if this is what you do then you take it to the next step, which for us was organizing our own shows. We started getting smarter in our early twenties as far as just trying to make the most of the work we were putting into it which eventually trickled down to recording and distributing our own music.

I think our whole career has been a series of baby steps upward, a few steps back down. I mean you always make mistakes but for the most part we’ve never really had to take a huge step. I was always afraid of taking that big step, signing to that major label, or doing something that’s going to be such a large step that if you turn around you cannot directly see where you were standing yesterday. I think I can speak on behalf of the whole label. We all think it’s important to be able to turn around and see where you were standing yesterday so that you never really lose touch with what the fuck’s going on with yourself personally.

That's probably made the effort you’re putting in more worth it?

Well that’s the hope. You never really know until your dead if it was worth it or not, but just as far as the day-to-day, I don’t ever have to question how I got here. I can imagine with an artist who went from being rather obscure to having a ringtone hit. I can imagine when that artist is by himself or herself just kind of contemplating or thinking about it all. There could be some confusion to it. “Is it because they love me as a person? Or is it because of this beat that I bought?” Whatever it may be you know the thing about us is we’ll always be able to see exactly how we got where we got. Of the many insecurities I might have I know that that’s not one of ‘em.

Right. That’s awesome. Atmosphere did sign with Epitaph at one point, but now you’re strictly on Rhymsayers, right?

In 2002 there were a lot of labels trying to sign Atmosphere. It wasn’t a matter of me saying, “Fuck you, you’re a major label.” It was just a matter of me going, “None of these deals are what I’m looking for.” If I’m going to sign Atmosphere away to anybody, I’m going to ensure that you’re going to taking care of the rest of the people on my label- because it’s not so much about me being a star as it is about me taking part in this grassroots movement that we’ve got going on. It was one of those things that if I’m taking Atmosphere then I’m taking everyone else too. And that’s what tends to scare major labels because they don’t want to tie themselves into accidentally spending way more fucking money then they wanted to, especially considering they don’t know where an artist like me is gonna go.

At that point I was in my late twenties so the unpredictability is always there. A twenty-two year old- you could probably just throw a bunch of money at ‘em and get them to do whatever the fuck you want them to. Whereas I’m going, “Look man, I’ve been working my own label for ten years. I have a blueprint that works. It’s slow but it works.” So it probably looks like it’d be more difficult for them to control me. I don’t see that in a bad way I just mean literally that’s just really what it is. I’m not dissing the concept of what they do it just is what they do. The thing that I learned from that experience is that a lot of the people from these major labels are actually nice dudes who actually give a fuck about music. It’s just that they work for an entity whose sole job is to make fucking money, and so they have to bite the bullet or do certain things that sometimes they don’t necessarily believe is the most artistic choice but that’s not the point. The point is they try to become this happy medium. But as one individual they’re not going to be able to change a whole lot.

I learned to stop shitting on majors but I also realized it probably won’t ever work for us. I became friends with a couple of the guys from Epitaph through the course of this because we’d done a Warped Tour, so I got to meet and drink and eat fucking bar-b-que with dudes on a regular basis. When we looked at what to do with Seven’s Travels we wanted to do the next best thing from we did with God Loves Ugly. We put God Loves Ugly out on Rhymesayers but we distributed it through Fat Beats which was kind of like a major indie at the time. We wanted to do something even bigger because I could tell from touring that what we were doing was really hitting home in some of these smaller markets, in places like Boise and Omaha. And a lot of those places don’t necessarily have the type of indie rap stores that Fat Beats sold to. So I’m like, “Well how do we get our shit into the stores in places like Boise?” Chances are we either have to go for a mainstream store and find out how to get in to Target, or whatever the case may be, but how do you make it available for the kids in these smaller towns? Epitaph agreed to help us with that. Basically we didn’t really sign a deal with them, we just gave them one record for distribution. They needed a guinea pig because they wanted to work with rappers and we were a pretty safe guinea pig because we already had a sales system, a tour history, and things like that. For them it wasn’t really a bad bet to go, “Ok, we’ll start with this Seven’s Travels record from Atmosphere to see what happens. After that they went on to do Sage Francis. They did a record for Idealabilites. They did some shit with Bus Driver and Gifta Gab.

I think we were a doorway for them to experience with what happens if a punk-rock label does rap. And on the other hand we were able to use them as a guinea pig to see what happens if we could get our music into stores in a smaller town, which is just another like I said, another baby step from where we were with Fat Beats. After the one record with Epitaph our deal with them was over. We didn’t need to do more music with them. I’m still good friends with those guys. There’s no love lost, it’s just that was what we were doing- a one record distro deal. After that we ended up with another distributor, which ultimately did get our shit into all of the Virgins and Towers and Target’s. The kids in these small towns, especially out in the Mid West, they’re small enough that they don’t even have an independent record store. All they have is a Target twenty minutes away from their house. And if they drive an hour they can get to Columbia, Missouri where there is one indie store. Maybe they do go to Columbia once a month and they spend fifty bucks at that indie store. They go home and they cherish the records that they went there and bought. It was great being one of those kinds of bands, but I could just see with the way we were striking cords with some of these kids. I didn’t want to be one of those bands that people had to work to find anymore, because I do believe in what I have to say and I think that it could benefit some of these kids. If we continued being a band that you have to work to find there’s a lot of kids that might need to hear this shit that will never have access to it. The kids that did know how to get access to it they were already down, if not with me then with somebody else who had the similar morals and ethics. We’re not converting anybody there. How do we take these kids that ultimately grow up to listen to bands like Bush and convert them before they become those people? You know before they become a twenty-four year old douche? How do we convert them when they’re still 16 before they become a fucking douche that buys ruffies from their roommates?

Most of the time it is just a business transaction with these bigger labels, but like you said, you goal has always been to find a balance between getting music to these kids and staying true to yourself- which I what it should be about.

The thing is you do have to learn business in order to do that or else you’re just the guy in his basement writing raps or playing you’re guitar. It’s funny though, because I read the internet way too much and I listen to what kids have to say a lot of fingers get pointed and people get called sell outs. I’ve been called a sellout. People have been called sell outs thirty years ago and it’s going to happen thirty years from now. Ultimately when kids get disappointed or upset with their favorite artist, it’s not so much because of the actual artist that they’re disappointed, it’s themselves. Their identity is that of, “I hold myself to this light, so how could somebody that I respect make a decision that I wouldn’t have made?”

If you would have talked to me when I was twenty-two I was one of those people. I was pointing fingers at LL Cool J, but as I got older it was like, “Well I don’t know if he’s a fucking sell out just because of the image that might have been portrayed to me.” He may not have been in control of what was being put out there. For all I know the dudes been signed to Def Jam his whole life, how can I call him a sellout? It’s not like he went to a label bigger than Def Jam. I’m rambling, I’m rambling now and I apologize for that so I’ll try not to. I guess at the end of the day it’s always been about business though. In ’95 when we were going, “Ok, we’ve got this Headshots tape that we want to get into people’s hands,” we had to figure out how to do that. I’m standing outside of a show that’s sold out, it’s the Fugees and The Roots playing, and I’m selling my tape, trying to just pick anybody going like, “Hey, hey, check this out. You wanna buy some underground rap shit? Five bucks, yo five bucks. No, no, no, it’s the shit. You’re going to like it. You should buy this.” That’s where it starts. There was a strategy put into place. My strategy was I’m going to stand outside of this show full of people who like rap and I’m going to try to sell them my tape. That was marketing.

People get upset or disappointed when it reaches a certain level because no longer can they claim you as part of their identity and use you to separate themselves from the masses. And that’s really important to younger people. They don’t want to be like the rest of the brainwashed idiots. They want to stand apart so their books, their records, the movies they go see, the art they chose to consume, and who they chose to fuck is what they use to separate themselves from the masses. I know I’m not saying anything you don’t already know. That’s when you can go, “Ok, shut up and let’s talk about something else.”

Haha. No, it relates a lot to snowboarding too, because that’s how it’s been with people like Shaun White. He’s the one making the most money and he gets a lot of exposure…

And all the other snowboarders are like, “Fuck that dude, he sold out.”

Yep, exactly.

What it comes down to though is if you went against yourself or if you did something that you’re not proud of to get where you are, then that’s something you have to deal with. If people want to call you names because of it I see it as part of the burden that you have to carry. In my situation, I don’t care what people fucking call me anymore. Over the past ten years I’ve had to learn to grow a thick skin, and just be really rational in how I see things. Really I don’t care because truthfully if you could use me as part of your identity, even if it’s just to hate me, even if you want to be one the kids that goes, “I hate Atmosphere” and use that as part of your identity to get you where you’ve got to go, then problem solved. I still win. I’m still a playing influence and quite honestly, I don’t think I’m going to have a negative influence on one of these mother fuckers so even if you want me to be an influence in the sense of, “You hate Atmosphere because they’re mainstream now,” so be it. I’m cool with that.

“When Life Gives You Lemons”…Dan Monick photo.

There probably comes a point when that’s the way you have to see things, because otherwise you’ll just end up driving yourself crazy.

You’ll end up lashing out and saying something bad about those people and you’ll just look bitter. At the end of the day it’s not a matter of how it looks, the truth is you’ve got to come to terms with that because let’s say what I’m doing right now is disappointing some kid who used to be a fan right. He can take his disappointment and use that to manifest into and possibly inspire him to make the type of music he wishes I would go make, or go make music that’s even better than mine. Because let’s face it, I’ve had plenty of artists in my years, especially in my younger days who pushed me to go and outdo them. I would hear a record and be like, “God this guy fucking sucks. I’m going to prove that I’m better than this guy.” No matter how you cut it, it’s part of the influence, whether you love it or hate it, it doesn’t fucking matter. As long as I’m not feeding you negativity and feeding you bull shit it doesn’t matter if you love me or hate me. That’s how I see it, because it’s there and you have to acknowledge it. You have to reconcile with it, and you have to figure out what you’re going to do with it. You don’t have to love it. That’s not part of what you have to do.

Completely true. What was it, do you think, that completely drew you to hip hop in the first place when you were younger?

I think it was just nature. It was just part of the design. As a kid growing up you’re mostly exposed to the music that you’re parents listen to and the music that my parents were listening to were the precursors of hip hop. When hip hop began my Father played it. When you had Grand Master Flash and the Series Five or anything off of the Sugar Hill record label my Dad had these records. As time went on, I think it was around the time of Run DMC, when that movement began I realized these songs weren’t for my Dad anymore. These songs are now for me. That’s right around the time my Dad stopped listening to rap because at that point he’s probably like, “These young mother fuckers are just yelling at me.”

For me as a kid I just picked up the baton right there. I think Run DMC was really what made me want to be a dj. I wanted to be a dj first and Run DMC’s what made me start collecting records. I wanted to be Jam Master J. To me he was a band. I would see it on TV or some and here was this one guy back there being a whole band. It wasn’t even like he was a dj. My Dad collected records. He had friends who were wanna be dj’s back then. You know disco dj’s or whatever the fuck. Jam Mater J was more than a dj to me. I saw him as a whole fucking band. The way he would stop the records and let them finish the line. What he was doing was no longer what Jam Master Flash was doing. It wasn’t blends and scratching. He was actually controlling the drums, as well as controlling the horns, as well as controlling everything so that’s what really got me. The rappers were just there to give me the rest of the song, but really I think that was what drew me in, Run DMC and Jam Master J.

Nice. What does it mean to you, being such a huge hip hop fan, and now being praised as one of the most successful independent artists in hip hop?

You know those kind of things come and go. In another year they’re going to be praising somebody else for that. I don’t really try and think too much about it. The only time I ever really consider some of those titles is when I’m talking shit with my friends. And if I’m talking shit with a rapper friend or something and they say some shit and they got the last word, I’ll figure out some kind of clever funny way to remind them that I sell more records then they do. I try not to pay any attention to that kind of shit because it doesn’t really have a whole lot to do with what my job is, and what I’m trying to get accomplished. The fact that Subway sells more sandwiches than the guy next door doesn’t necessarily mean that the Subway sandwiches are better.

Yeah but it’s showing you’re success on a level that you’ve got this many fans and this many people noticing your music, which is cool.

I mean I guess but really the notice part there, once that gets accomplished I don’t have to think beyond that, because the stuff I had to think about already came before getting people to notice. The stuff I have to think about is making the record and performing the records live and then figuring out how to help the guy’s that work at the office to get people to notice. That is the goal and we kind of touched on that earlier. How do make this shit more available? How do we get the people to notice? But once it hits that notice point then I take a step back and go back to wearing my artist hat and put it in the hands of other guys who work for me, and they get to figure out what to do with it from there.

I don’t lay down in bed to go to sleep at night and smile about the fact that tons of people have noticed my music. It’s just not something that you really think about. Now the people that work at Rhymesayers, they can pat themselves on the back for figuring out how to get more people to notice Atmosphere, because that’s their art. That’s what they do. For me it just comes down to, “How do I get my message across?” or, “How do I communicate whatever the fuck it is that I’m trying to communicate?”

What are some of your proudest achievements in music and life in general?

Oh wow. Um, hmm, I don’t know if I’ve ever really stopped and thought about what my prized achievements are.

Well have there ever been any moments where you’re like, “This is fucking sick right now,” and just totally stoked on?

Well yeah, I had a kid fifteen years ago and that was pretty fucking sick. And we’ve managed to keep him alive for fifteen years and healthy and that’s pretty sick. But musically, you know, that’s a tough one. When I get to meet my heroes that’s usually when I get pretty stoked, for lack of a better term, but I try not to even let that get too far, because I know they’re just people and they don’t want to fell weird when I come up and shake their hand and tell them, “Blah, blah, blah, blah.” I usually just try to internalize it and just go, “Whoa I just met KRS One,” or, “Whoa Chuck D just emailed me.”

Actually you know what I’m pretty excited about? I got to do a song with two of my heroes from when I was younger, KRS One and Buckshot from Black Moon. They’re doing a record together and they asked me to be a part of it. I guess that’s one of the things that musically I was really fucking excited about.

Dan Monick photo.

Nice. Now with your latest album When Life Gives You Lemons how did that album title come about?

I stole it from my girlfriend and her friends. They were working on a photography piece. They decided to paint a bunch of lemons gold for the photos they were taking and one of them just kind of muttered it not even thinking about it. My girlfriend she’s like, “Yeah, when life gives you lemons, you paint that shit gold.” She probably didn’t even realize I was listening because I’m a horrible listener to begin with but I filed it in my head and took it over to Anthony’s [Producer Ant’s] house the next day and was like, “Here. Here’s the name of the record. What do you think?” And he liked it. Yeah I stole it. It’s hip hop, we steal shit.

Haha. That’s right. Everybody steals shit I think. So, on this album your writing seems more fiction than it has on previous albums. Where do you go mentally for songs like that and why did you make that transition?

Well, I think truthfully, writing songs on this album would always just start with an idea. I didn’t really take any kind of writing classes. I don’t know shit about writing. I don’t know shit about writing songs. All I know is self taught and from studying other people’s music but truth be told I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I just do it the way I always did it. You sit. You dwell. You think of an idea. Sometimes it comes in two minutes. Sometimes it takes twenty minutes. Sometimes it can take two days. When you get the idea you start somewhere- it might be in the beginning, the middle- you might even have the ending first and then you build.

The thing is a lot of people have asked me this question. I used to say it in the past, for some reason nobody ever noticed, but all those old songs are fiction. If I had actually lived through the songs that I had put on those older records like I’d be dead right now from tequila poisoning. Even though they were based on a personal truth, a feeling I had, or a situation I was in, I never felt like I had the right to tell a story that was going to implicate somebody else. So let’s look at some of these older songs for instance, the torn relationship that I used to write on my record, if you took those as truth then you would also have to see that I was implicating this woman. And that wouldn’t be fair to anybody. Especially in my city, could you imagine? Everybody would be like, “Oh that’s that chic he’s talking about. Fuck her.” Or, “That’s the chic he’s talking about. I’m going to see if I can try and fuck her,” or who knows what.

I’ve always paid attention to making sure that I don’t tell a true story to the point where it’s going to make you judge the other person in the story. So I’ve always manipulated the stories. I’ve always made it fiction, even though whatever that message is in the story that I’m trying to communicate, that stems from a real place. On the Lemons album the only thing that I changed were the words I, me, and you which made it sound more fiction but those stories also started from a personal place, from something I saw. I just learned to stop making it look like it was me for a handful of reasons. For one, I was tired of everybody who didn’t know expecting a certain person when they met me. People were like, “You’re the dude who wrote that?” They’re expecting some guy who pissed off and brutal and drunk and considering trying to fuck with your ex-girlfriend, so when they would actually meet me and realize, “Whoa you’re not like that.” It was confusing.

I just wanted to take emphasis away from the I, the me, and all those past stories. Another reason was because I wanted to challenge myself to be a better writer…whoa hold on a second.

Okay.

[Sean talks to someone in the room]

Hey sorry. I have no idea what I was just saying. Oh yeah, I just wanted to be a better writer. I mean, I’m going to be 37 years old in like a week and I’m still writing raps about I, me, me, I, me, me? I don’t know. I want to get old with this and I want my art to reflect more of who I really am. I felt like I could do that better if I stopped writing I, me, me songs. As the album was coming to a close I intentionally wrote a song called Me and a song called You and one called The Rest of Us, as almost a joke to me and to Anthony about what I’m trying to do now lyrically. I’ve wrote all these songs, “You’ve done this to me. I’ve done this to you.” And somehow finally put a close to it. I wrote a song called Me and now I can never write another me. Now it’s done. Hahaha. And I wrote a song called You and now it’s done. Hahaha. Yeah, stupid shit I know.

Slug and Ant securing it up. Dan Monick photo.

What kind of standards do you have for you songs before you decide to put them on an album?

That kind of changes and morphs. It depends on the album. For the record we put out in ’05, the one with the Mohawk cover: Imagine How Much Fun Having, whatever it was called, the standards for that were about the beat whereas standards about the new record were about the words. On the new record I didn’t leave too many holes where you could poke. Whereas on the last record I wasn’t as worried about poking holes, I was more concerned with, “Ok, well here’s a song that sounds like 1993. I’m gonna rap like it’s 1993. And here’s a song that sounds like it’s 1989 so I’m gonna rap like it’s 1989.” I was more concerned about being musical on the last record whereas on Lemons I was more concerned with the actual story, especially since I don’t know how to write stories, so I was insecure about making sure these stories made sense and that I wasn’t leaving open gaps that made no sense.

We do this to get better at doing it. That’s one of the things that we always have to consider when we’re making music. Not only do we want to make a song that people understand. I don’t want to be hard to interpret anymore but we want to make a song that conveys a pretty direct message of some sort. The message depends on how I’m feeling that day, but we also want to learn as we go, and so some of the songs that people hear- some of the songs that people like- I look at and go, “Man, that song’s not that good.” The only part of it that was good was that it taught me this. I think our criteria for the music is way less forgiving than everybody else’s criteria. I don’t even know if that sentence made sense but I just wanted to say the word criteria out loud.

Oh man. Let’s talk live shows. Who did you watch when you were younger who has influenced your stage performance? You guys hands down have one of the best live shows I’ve even seen. It’s so energetic and fun.

I went to every rap show that came through my city as a kid, period. I also went to a decent amount of rap shows as a young adult. I guess De La Soul would be one of the things. When they perform there’s just a little touch of Las Vegas, in the sense of there’s a real showmanship. They make sure to do little subtle things that you only see at the show- that you can’t do on a record. There’s comedy and a little humor in there. There are things that make people smile even when they’re doing songs that aren’t smiley songs. A lot of my songs are not smiley songs but there’s little nuances and little things that I want to place in the show that still make people smile and understand that they’re all here together enjoying this. You don’t have to come here to get sad during one of our sad songs. The point is this sad song is being heard by 1,000 people and you guys are all relating to it. You should actually be able to all celebrate that together. And so in a weird way I think I might have stole a little bit of that from De La Soul and Sammy Davis Jr.- people who understand that showmanship goes beyond just showing off how good you are at something.

There are a lot of dudes that can rap circles around me literally. I’ve got so many friends, and some people who I haven’t met yet, who are way better rappers than me but who will never be able to touch the live show with me because they’re a virtualoso. There are guitar virtualoso’s who can just do fucking anything on that guitar but who don’t know how to make you jump up and down. That’s the thing. The other rappers in the audience, they’ll love that rap virtualoso but there are people in the audience who really could give two shits about you rhyming, “Astro projections with gastro infections” during a freestyle. They want to hear the story. They want to hear what you’re communicating. So it goes both ways.

How do you maintain relationships with your son, family, girlfriend when you’re on the road so much?

Just do your best. You just do your best. That’s all you can do.

Are you guys in the works on another album right now?

Actually we start today- completely from scratch. Which means today will probably just be a series of meetings. Meetings may be the wrong word, that’s a little too formal. A series of hang out’s where we just kind of sit, talk- talk about what we would like to do. If anybody has discovered any new music in the last year that they haven’t already played for each other we sit around and we play music for each other. We critique other people’s shit. We talk shit. The Jay Z record just leaked. We’ll probably talk about the new Jay Z record- even though we’re going to make a record that sounds nothing like the new Jay Z record. It’s just one of those things that as musicians we’ll bond and analyze music. Even our own. We’ll talk about the last record. We’ll probably talk about the pros and cons of the last couple of records. We’ll spend the next week and a half to two weeks talking and then I’ll start putting ideas on the table. Anthony will start putting ideas on the table. Nate and Eric, the two musicians that we work with, will start putting their ideas on the table and then it just goes from there.

Cool. So then you’re home for awhile right now?

Aside from maybe little weekend travels to different places. I don’t actually intend to do another full blown tour for quite awhile.

Matt Blum photo.

How did you get your nickname Slug?

It got shortened from Slug-O. And Slug-O got shortened from Little Slug-O which was my nickname as a kid.

Well if you ever do want to snowboard I can find somebody to teach you.

I appreciate it but because of my life, I’m afraid that I don’t have the luxury of being able to have my arm in a sling for six weeks. So no, never. But no disrespect to snowboarding. It’s just that I’m one of those dudes. Even as a kid I wasn’t that kid that jumped off the side of the garage just to see what it was like. I was always a very neurotic kid about breaking bones and things of that nature. I wasn’t the most athletic kid. I was a little bit more of a nerd.

So you were never into to any sports? You never played any sports?

Naw. I like watching basketball and football on television because my friends get excited when their team wins but other than that I really don’t care. I respect it though. I respect athletes who aren’t afraid of pain. If I could quote Richard Pryor I would say- you know that phrase, “No pain, no gain?” I have my own phrase, “No pain sounds good to me.”

Haha. No pain, no pain, ever.

No pain, no pain.

Well hopefully one of these days we can get you guys involved at one of our tradeshows or events.

You guys wanna like rent a jester or something. I could come dress like a clown and juggle.

Yeah exactly, at one of our trade shows, just sit in the booth make balloon animals. No actually we had Redman come out last year at one of our parties for the Women’s Issue in Vegas. It was pretty dope.

That is dope. Redman puts on a good show too so that sounds like fun.

Yeah it was fun. Well thank you so much again for your time. I really appreciate it.

Well thank you for your time and have a great afternoon Tawnya. Bye.

Rhymesayers Entertainment