Atmosphere

For a dude who seems kind of perpetually pissed off at the world, hip-hop aficionado Atmosphere sure has a talent for bringing out the deepest, innermost emotions within himself and his listeners. While other arena venue rhyme-slingers are hailed as the “saviors of modern hip-hop” just because they don’t turn the AutoTune up to 11 on every track, Atmosphere actually brings legitimacy, integrity and intellectualism back to hip-hop. Because let’s be clear about something, an angry white dude yelling at a camera in music videos doesn’t equate to being groundbreaking by virtue of those qualities alone. Lyricism that is both introspective and externally critical of culture and society, that isn’t afraid to show vulnerability while still being unfiltered and raw, and that can read like both diary pages and literary prose at the same time, that’s what hip-hop should be about. Please don’t let any hip-hop TV or radio stations tell you otherwise. Frontman Slug will happily tell it like it is instead. - Brien Overly