Atmosphere’s TV project ends with a twist

After 20-plus years at the forefront of independent hip-hop, a tenure marked by regular releases of highly anticipated recordings — including Top 10 titles on Billboard’s album chart — the much-loved Minneapolis duo Atmosphere dropped a new album Dec. 13 without any advance notice whatsoever.

Titled “Whenever,” the 12-track surprise had been created as a soundtrack, according to the pair’s verbal half, Sean Daley, the MC known as Slug. “We didn’t know we were making an Atmosphere album,” the rapper said in a mid-December phone call, not quite a month ahead of Atmosphere’s Jan. 14 headlining appearance at Metro. “We thought we were making a soundtrack to a television show.”

Slug politely declined to provide any details about said show, though he did allow that the members of its creative team were avowed and avid Atmosphere admirers. When they first approached Slug and his partner, Atmosphere’s producer-DJ Anthony “Ant” Davis, “they were just, ‘Hey, we’re fans of your material — could you make some music for this?’ And I was, like, ‘Yes I can.’ And they just let us run.

“They never really advised me or Anthony at all,” Slug continued, admitting that this complete carte blanche “was kinda scary for us, because we didn’t know what we were doing. “[What] we did was, we tried to imagine everything we made as being the first thing that you hear at the end of the episode, after the cliffhanger when the credits roll.”

Though the TV people “approved of what we sent them,” Slug said, everything went south when “the network lawyers came in, and they were asking for things that I couldn’t say yes to.” The sticking point was the perennially perilous issue of music ownership — “like, who owns the master recordings, and what can those masters be used for. And I have never given up ownership of my music to anybody.”

The network’s concomitant trade-off promises of increased exposure for Atmosphere were paltry compensation, Slug noted, “for a band that’s over 20 years old. To me, ‘exposure’ is just not a big-enough carrot.

“I understood where they were coming from — they were just trying to protect their best interests,” the rapper acknowledged. “But [signing away music rights] was not something I could do.”

Slug characterizes their parting of ways as “amicable,” the upshot being that he and Ant were left with a fresh trove of Atmosphere tracks — the ones that they stealth-released last month as “Whenever,” on their venerable Twin Cities indie label Rhymesayers Entertainment. (That company itself is enjoying its 25th year of operation).

“I hear a cinematic kind of vibe in a lot of these songs,” Slug remarked, adding that he “really felt free while makin’ it, because I was making these stand-alone songs that were tied to somebody else’s art— my interpretation of their vibes.

“Whereas in the past a lot of Atmosphere albums [have taken themselves] very seriously, here I was making this music that was not overly self-aware,” the wordsmith observed, contrasting “Whenever” with his longstanding output of disarmingly personal takes on life and love (especially, oft notoriously, the latter). “I was, like, able to say certain things that I might not say on an Atmosphere album.”

A lyrical allusion to behemoth cinematic franchise “The Matrix” on album track “Romance,” for instance, is something that “I would never reference on an Atmosphere album — it’s just not my style.” And elements of Ant’s production, while replete with the beatmaker’s customarily rich, retro-leaning samples, also encompass what Slug calls “silly sounds.”

“There’s a silly synth on ‘Romance’; there’s a cowbell. I feel like Anthony was [thinking], ‘Hey, this is an opportunity for me to explore noises that I don’t normally get to explore, because Sean won’t normally rap over a cowbell.’ You know, I feel like being able to put this record out, and be secure with the results, will have a really good, positive long-term effect on Anthony and myself.”

Looking back on the songs of “Whenever,” from their TV-soundtrack origins to their presence on the album, Slug says he sees a distinct through-line: “A lot of the material on here supports the concept of reclamation. And to think about how we reclaimed the music from the other source that it was supposed to end up in the hands of — all of it is too perfect.

“Twenty years ago,” the rapper reflected, “I didn’t think things happened for a reason. I was just a guy getting wasted and yelling into a microphone. I thought we forced the idea of those connections just to be a part of each other. Now I’m a believer.”

Moira McCormick is a local freelance writer.