We sent Kristen N. Brown out to the Atmosphere show in L.A. last night and she came back with a pile of lemons and some lovely photos, despite rumors of rampant pot smoking in the venue.
Last night was the mid-way point on the tour in support of Atmosphere’s 6th album, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold. The album has been getting solid reviews and Rhymesayers has been marketing it aggressively, so I assumed it would be a great show. Let the record show that I am a huge Atmosphere fan - the old albums are fantastic, and I’ve pretty much worn out my copy of 2005’s You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having. They are generally in my ‘can’t do any wrong’ pile. That being said, wtf?
[ed: WTF indeed…more after the jump.]
Last week at Coachella, Murs informed the audience that the #1 rule in hip-hop is that you gotta look fly. I dressed in my best indie-rap duds, but apparently Ant+Slug didn’t get the memo.
My sartorial complaints aside, things continued to go downhill with sleepy song selections and just generally blah ambiance. They dug deep often, playing heavily from Lucy Ford and God Loves Ugly, but it was the most docile hip-hop show I’ve ever been to, and I mean that in a bad way. For as widely appreciated as their last album was, I was surprised that the only track played from it was “Little Man” which started the show’s dip into sad emo rap territory where it would stay. New album getting solid reviews? Check. Line around the block? Check. Heaps of kids who have all your albums and know all the words? Check. A sick hip-hop show that makes everybody go apeshit and sends us all home happy? Err.. Maybe in a couple weeks at El-P/Dizzee Rascal.
I guess what irked me most is that I didn’t get the feeling that Slug really cared about any of it. That kind of vibe will immediately ruin a show, despite what songs are played or what the crowd is like. If the people on stage aren’t genuine or aren’t into it, I won’t be either. As much as he raps about how he’s washed up and how Atmosphere hasn’t gone as far as it could, you’d think they’d pull it out at every gig, especially one like the “big show” - his words - last night. I found myself drifting off at several points, paying more attention to the overly-wasted over-rocker in front of me, waiting for him to fall.
Towards the end of the show, Slug talked about how it was time for them to leave the stage and then come back for an encore, but deemed it too pretentious and said he didn’t need his ego stroked (hah), so he started the encore without leaving the stage. This consisted of Slug rapping over an acoustic guitar. Ooook. Anyway, drunk dude totally ate floor during the last song.
