ATMOSPHERE – Strictly Leakage – 2007 – Album review
HIGHLIGHTS: Little Math You - The Things That Hate Us – Domestic Dog – Crewed Up – You Played Yourself
SOUNDBITE: “Unprotected sex with that one you just met?/ You ain’t even got all your hep-shots yet!”
RATING: 5/5
The ‘Angstie Boys’ are back and bizarrely (because I would far more happily have paid for this than other releases that I have actually bought) this entirely free downloadable LP is their sunniest and most consistent yet. Indeed, as far as angst goes there’s very little on the LP at all - the text that accompanies the free download links on label Rhymesayers’ site pretty much sums it up - “It is a party album. You are a party animal.” The last thing I bought by the band was You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having - a predictably miserable affair which lacked the flashes of brilliance on the last thing I actually enjoyed by Slug and Ant - the inconsistent but occasionally brilliant Seven’s Travels where tracks like Reflection and Shoes start what Strictly Leakage finishes off. Ok, the skipping break of Little Math You belies the fact that this is one of the few tracks with even a vague sense of Atmosphere ‘knowing your pain’ – in this case the pain of suburban white boys who find identity in a culture (hip-hop) which some feel they’ve borrowed. Not Slug though. His point – fuck what anyone else thinks – “I don’t give a fuck where you grew up or where you live’. Elsewhere, for the most part, the MC’s sense of humour is to the fore and often when he’s exercising himself on the topic of the opposite sex – especially with regard to pulling them. On Domestic Dog the sexually frustrated refrain is, “Women at the bar, wanna be a star/ Stop her on the street, she thinks you a freak/ It’s illegal to flirt, when we at work/…” so where does this resourceful man try his luck? That’s right, “So nowadays I score at the grocery store”. Myriad comedic examples of male attempts at flirting and checking women out in said store ensue – and if a male audience are laughing with these, they’re also joining the women in laughing at them. Slug gets a little more caustic on You Played Yourself’s recounting of the sorts of encounters he gets at gigs – over-familiar wannabes thrusting demos at him, a drunken fool complaining about Atmosphere’s use of a live band at an NYC gig “Who you think you are? The Roots?” (Slug stops the bouncers beating the kid up and runs outside to give him his money back) and turning down the advances of (overly) available (and drunk) groupies, “I’m getting to old for the trap/ Go wiggle that cleavage at the…[no doubt grateful]…opening act” whilst pointing out that he can “Actually see your clitoris through your jeans.” Mind you he does spoil it slightly with classy lines like “I would never put my meat sauce up in that pasta”. The humour is at it’s sharpest on The Things That Hate Us - which could equally have been called The Things I Hate U.S. a dig at all vices American over a woozy sun-drenched soul loop, “America the beautiful, that’s how she played us/ Wasn’t that cute, it must have been her make-up”. Opener YGM (Young, gifted and mixed) underlines the fact that Slug is in fact mixed-race – something that has escaped many ‘fans’, Full Moon manages to make looking forward to a gig sound like a monthly lycanthropic awakening and Get It To Get Her rips into loser mates who seem to feel the world owes them something – especially a girlfriend. I could go on but I must have said enough by now. So there you have it: Strictly Leakage - 13 heavy buttered-soul flavoured bumps topped with rhymes that have a pleasantly lingering after-taste. There’s lots of boom and quite a bit of bap. Don’t sit there gawping – if you still haven’t – go and download it. Out now on Rhymesayers.
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