Atmosphere
The Vic – Chicago, IL
11/16/2008

Atmosphere, hailing from Minneapolis, MN, was kind enough to stop in Chicago on the second to last night of their more than 50-date Paint the Nation Tour. “I’ve always had a crush on this city,” said Slug (Sean Daley) in between flows. Ant (Anthony Davis) rocked the 1’s and 2’s while slug spitting rhymes like:

A friend in Chicago said that I should stay persistent
If I stay around I’m bound to break resistance
Fuck you Lucy for defining my existence

The entire group is comfortable on stage, making it clear that they’ve done this before. With over 50 tour dates, they’ve quite literally painted the nation, “don’t ever fucking question that.” To round out the set, they played older songs right alongside the recent When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold tracks. Slug prefaced “God Loves Ugly” with “I don’t know why a city full of beautiful people would love some ugly fuckers from Minneapolis,” just before the beat dropped. During the track he shouted “now all the beautiful people be quiet” and the crowd erupted.

Atmosphere was kind enough to bring Chicago’s first snow with them for the sold out show at Vic Theater. “I come to Chicago and I bring snow; You people come to my show and all you bring is sunshine,” said Slug before spitting about his hangover on “Sunshine .”

After “Guarantees,” Slug enlightened the crowd that Ant originally made the beat for Brother Ali (also on Rhymesayers ) who was planning to write a song about a character who commits suicide. Sean pays tribute to Ali by finishing the first verse with “a friend of mine tried to kill himself to the same song.”

For a finale, Slug brought out Blueprint and Abstract Rude for some freestylin’. Topics included the Bears loss, the Chicago Cubs, and of course Obama’s election.

Afterwards, Slug took the time to apologize to the crowd for his “old school shit” while closing out the show. “To me, it’s more than just the guy on the mic, it’s a whole community. So, we’re gonna do some old school shit right now; everybody in here put a peace sign in the air and when I count to three, you say peace; we do that three times in a row.” 1…2…3… and with that he reminded the crowd that “tonight’s show is brought to you by the letter V” and with a final “Rhymesayers is # 1!” he was gone.

As an Audio Arts & Acoustics major, I should mention how great this show sounded. Whoever was running the console for this tour really knew what they were doing. Here’s to the unsung hero, the sound guy.

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