Atmosphere Interview

Tags: ant, atmosphere, epitaph, rhymesayer, sage francis, slug

Do you like this? Share it with your friends and help Be-Mag to spread the word about Rollerblading. Like us on Facebook, add us on Google+ or follow us on Twitter to get the latest updates from the Blading world!

Alright, alright, i know what y` all wanna say. Another Atmosphere Interview? Hasn`t there yet been one not so long ago?

Well i thought the same too as i got asked if i wanted to interview Sean again, then i flipped through my old Be-Mags and realized that this interview was already two years old. Atmosphere already released a new album and it somehow seems to be like nobody recognized it. Even though the big "hype" around Atmosphere calmed a bit down it still definitly does not mean that they lost anything in style or meaning.

And so it does turn out into another story about Atmosphere online, the only difference related to the old interview is that this one is an online - exclusive (the old one was printed in Be-Mag issue 11 or st.) and this interview is straight reflecting the game of ask and answer while the older one was made up kinda like a short story.
Enjoy.

Alright so lets start with an anoyoing one, what is it like to be always considered as the King of Emo - Rap?
Well, i used to take it personal and get mad that journalists tried to seperate me and some of my friends like Sage Francis from the usual Rap- Thing, but nowadays, i do not care anymore what they wanna call it. You know, Rap started as this little Baby Tree and we all watered it and it grew really big and got a lot of branches, and so i sit on this branch and 50 Cent sits on this other branch and i`m alright with that. I know who i am, i know where i come from and so i`m okay. But i do know why people do that, it`s usual a journalistic thing because you have, let`s say for example, a rapper who is talking about something like personal experiences and people who might not know this person at all but read their lyrics might say it`s emo just because it comes from the heart and it`s kinda like the music Emo - Rock is like.

Your new album has recently been released and it sounds a bit different to your old album "Sevens Travel", what would you say about your new album and what were your influences?
I do not know which influences me and ant(hony) had but the general difference with this album is that we had time to put a focus onto the songs because when we released Sevens Travels i basically made that record on tour. Usually did i write the lyrics on the road, then did we had some short time off and went to the studio, recorded everything and were off on tour again. And so was Sevens Travels not very focused, it was more like a collection of songs and that`s why we called it Sevens Travels. And so this time was it that we had 3 months time to record the album and had time to focus more on the record. I also had this time to play a role in the direction of the production and ant had a role in the direction of the production of the lyrics. He came up with a beat and said i should maybe write something about this or that theme because in his opinion would that fit good and so i sat down and tried to write lyrics in the direction he wanted them to be. The album seen as one is more focused on one kind of mood and that may also be the reason why this album is shorter than our other releases because i didn`t want to hit as many moods as possible like i did on our earlier releases.

Something that is different on this album related to your older ones is also that on this one your are lyrics printed in the booklet although you used to tell me you`d never print your lyrics into your album and never did before. Why this change?
Because, when we were mixing the album i intentionally made the lyrics quiet as compared to the way we usually do records. We usually put the lyrics way above. I still am actually against printing the lyrics in the book because i feel like that`s very potencious. It`s like "Oh look at my words, they are so important and so good, you`ve got to read them". And just because i feel in general not that way is the reason why we never printed lyrics in the booklet of the cd. But i had once a conversation with a friend of mine who is also a rapper and who always puts his lyrics into his records and he explained to me: Well, i always print my lyrics into my record because when i was making records in the 80s and the early 90s we would put the lyrics quiet because that was not the most important of the record, the most important was the beat.
And when we were mixing this record it seemed to me that ants beats were so great, that i wanted them to be the most important thing of the record and i started to mix my lyrics low. And also is it just sometimes, that you do not hear everything that is recorded especially when the lyrics are recorded a bit lower than the beat. So these were the most important aspects why the lyrics were printed into th booklet this time.

There are even explanations to the songs on the record...
Yeah, that was because i just did not want the lyrics to be printed without anything because that is the potencious that i talked about before that i just do not like. Otherwise would i feel like some guy saying Here Are My Words! They Are Poetry! Read `em!!!
I also wanted to not point at the explanations so i just included them after the lyrics. You may not even know that they are the explanations unless you read the lyrics to the song and think like Hey wait, those words ain`t in that song.

Some Songs are explained and others ain`t, why that?
Cause some just don`t need explanations. Like that Song Last Night.

Did that really happen?
Yes.
(Authors Note: That Night is telling the story of a 16 year old girl that got raped and murdered after an Atmosphere Show in Albequerque by an unknown person)

Sad.
Yes, it really is.

Hum, okay....so this is a dumber one, but who are the persons in your booklet?
Are you familiar with the concept of six degrees of separation?

No..
Well its a theory that every person on this planet is just a point and that you are connected to every person in the world by six strings. Let`s take an example: You have met me, and i have met Chuck D. who knows Lou Reed and Lou Reed knows Paul Mc Cartney who knows John Lennon, so you`re connected to John Lennon by 6 strings. And so a friend of mine, a photographer decided to do with me a little project called the seven degrees of seperation which is quite dumb because it`s not kinda like "that new sensational thing" but we were making a book out of it and the piece that is in the booklet is actually a very big picture that ended up hanging on my wall. It`s a kind of connection of different underground artists that are connected in this picture. I don`t know everyone in it personal, but i do know, that "this guy" went out with "that girl" which is a singer in "that other guy"`s band. And so it continues. It`s a bit dumb since it starts with my cat and goes all the way to my dog.

So you have met all the persons in it?
No, i guess i actually met maybe like a third of them.

So what`s the situation with you and suicide girls?
I no longer support suicide girls.

Oh! Why?
Because i found out some things about the guy that runs it and the way he treats women because i´m connected to some women - focus groups in the states and since they told me some things do no longer support suicide girls. Same goes for American Appereal.

I always thought Suicidegirls.com was free to every girl without any treatment..
Yeah, i think suicidegirls was good, i know some girls who were involved in it and it is an empowerment to some of them but it just turns out that the guy who owns suicidegirls.com is sexual harassment all the way. He is not a very cool guy.

Did you know some of the girls in the DVD?
Yes. Almost all of them.

Haha, alright, let`s return to your album. I had the impression that it is more old-school related than Sevens Travels..?
Yes, definitly. But it wasn`t our agenda or something, it just happened that way. But at the same time i think that that element has been in all of our records, it`s just that we haven`t done it that good as we did it this time. Before we were making our version Boombap Hiphop. This time we actually came close to making our version of a public enemy song or a boogie down production song because that`s the stuff that we have learned from hiphop.

Sevens Travels sold quite like 150.000 times only in the U.S....or was it all around the world?
That was only in the U.S., we didn`t really keep good track of what was sold outide of the U.S. It`s harder to get to know how much records you sell overseas because in Europe our distributor Epitaph is working these things out so we have to get in contact with them, while in the U.S. we have the SoundScan system that we can track easy so that we know how many records we have sold over here.
We later realized that SoundScan does not include the records we sell at shows or the ones that are sold in smaller independent stores because those have not these little scanning-beeping-things that are used when you pay your stuff in a bigger supermarket.

So can you make a living off your music?
Yeah. I`ve been making a living off my music since 2001. Not a huge living, but i can pay my rent. It`s just that i do reinvest a huge part of the money that i`m making. Because when you sell 150.000 copies of your album, you do get a lot of money but i do reinvest a lot of the money i make into rhymesayers so we can put out records from other people.

What does Ant think of you always being interviewed and in the spotlight, is he kinda pissed?
No, absolutely no way, he has chosen that, he does not want to be public. He does not want to have anything to do with anything except the music, he does not want to have image or anything. If it would be up to him, we wouldn`t even sell records, we would just make songs.

So what was the best show in europe so far?
I guess that was the one in Berlin two years ago in that room that was so hot and i had to take off my shirt and everyone was going crazy, that was probably the best show that i`ve ever played in europe. I really thought i was gonna die that night because it was so hot, i thought i would die on stage and then back home everybody would gonna buy my record because, i died! Well, i didn`t die.
Back in the U.S. is my hometown my favourite place to play because i`m really famous in my city, if i`m playing concerts over there it`s always 5.000 - 10.000 visitors.

Do you usually have enough time to enjoy touring also in a touristic way like seeing the cities?
Not enough, i`ve been touring now for six years, and i`ve maybe had like a total of ten times that i`ve actually gotten to see cities in six years. Because you usually have got just enough time to set everything up for the show after you arrived after a ride that took 8 hours and after the show you`re exhausted and go back to the hotel and the next morning you`re already again on the road and so the circle closes.

So you`re looking forward to getting back into the states?
Kind of, but because i have to get into preparation for the next U.S. tour it`s also not that cool. But when you`re making a record, and you put one out you spend the next year bustin your ass and then you`ve got three months off and then you record the next album.

What was it like to see yourself with your video (National Disgrace) on TV?
It was weird, because i never really got played on TV before and people kept telling me that they`ve seen it and i don`t have Television at my house because where i live you have to have cable to watch TV because my TV does not even pick up Local Channels so you have to have Cable. But i do not have Cable because i usually do not watch TV.
And just one day when i was at a Coffeeshop where they had MTV2 on and suddenly i heard it and it was so weird and embarrassing because it was in my city and people were watching it and saying: "Oh cool Atmosphere on TV" and then wondered and were like, "hey isn`t that guy in the corner..." and i was like: "Oh my god, I´ve gotta get out of here".

Do you have to write autographs in the streets?
No, actually it`s cool in my city, i`m very public so people are used to seeing me around and people take it for granted that they maybe catch me drunk at a bar and also do i often work in a recordstore and work behind the counter, so people are just used to seeing me.
If i`m out in Los Angeles or Texas and i go to a record store then it sometimes happens that people recognize who i am and ask me for a autograph. But i`m very cool with that, it always makes me feel a bit proud when i sign an autograph. I definitly try to stay humble but i can`t deny that it always excites me very much to write an autograph or to give some shout- outs into cameras even though i always seem on the surface to be like "the cool guy".

What is your favorite song of the album?
Either Smart Went Crazy or Panic Attack because i like how they feel, they are very aggressive. On this album i used normal 58 microphones for almost the whole record. It`s a mic that rappers usually use on stage and not high-end ones that are usually used in studios and i love the way they sound like because it`s almost distortion even though you did not use an effect, it`s just the natural sound of it. Maybe it`s also because i love to perform live and these two songs remind me of what i feel like when i`m out on stage.
That`s weird, people usually never ask me what my favorite songs are.

Another thing that i noticed was that you included an hidden track of you on the Rhymesayers CD that came with the album for free, why that?
Well it were pretty much like 10 songs that didn`t made into the record. We started with 30 songs on four track and i cut it down to twenty and then i only kept the ones that fit the story of "you can`t imagine how much fun we`re having". And that song was a bit too much like "Rap, Rap, i rap better than you! I didn`t want any battleraps in that album so that`s the reason the song didn`t made the record. I like the song a lot but it just didn`t fit into the concept of the album.

So will there be something released like a B- Side Collection of the "You can`t imagine how much fun we`re having" sessions?
Yeah, for the next single, which will be "Hey there" are we gonna make a video and instead of a Cd - Single are we gonna release it as an EP with all of the songs on it that didn`t make it into the album.

Have you ever thought about how long you are going to rap for a living or do you think you will be doing this forever..?
No way man.

Yeah because some rappers always say that rappers should stop raping when their getting their first grey hairs and...
I already have grey hairs man, lot of them, haha. But to be serious, i haven`t set a goal, but i guess i will stop when it`s time for me to focus on the other side of rhymesayers because my basic job is to make rhymesayers work. I guess one day i will stop touring but i never will stop writing songs, it`l be just that i`m focussing then more on the marketing and planning side. And when that day`s come, i guess we wouldn`t even release the music but just play it for ourselves. Because rap music has always been very youth orientated and let`s say one day i`m 38, what am i then gonna say to a 15 year old kid that`s just gotten into rap music? I´d probably say something like "wear your seatbelt"*laugh* or other stuff that kids in this age couldn`t relate to.

So how do you think your involvement with punkrock music came together? Did you used to play in a band or st.?
No, actually this whole punkrock thing came up some years ago, because i personally started making music as a dj and used to listen to a lot of rap and r&b, i really used to listen to very cheesy r&b music like keith sweat and stuff. I don`t do anymore because i discovered white girls and they told me about punkrock and indie rock. I´m not too much into punkrock because it`s like 2 chords songs, 1 string solos and stuff... which is okay and i like the energy behind it and what it stands for, it`s just that i do not listen to it that much because it`s not that technical. But i do like very much what it stands for and that it makes people raise their voices, so you can say i relate more to punkrock ethics than i do to punkrock music.

Any final words?
Let`s go in and watch the show.

Thanks to Bastian Ruchay for contributing the interview.

Photos taken from Atmosphere's Myspace site.

For more information check out :

www.epitaph.com
www.rhymesayers.com

Pictures

1 of 2

Original size

atmosphere_01.jpg

Comments

June 06th, 2006 @ 09:52 - by deshiskater88

Lose the caps 'Mosthateda4'.

Atmosphere is a good rapper, I enjoy his music.

May 03rd, 2006 @ 09:35 - by mybloodyromance

esl's writing interveiws...

April 24th, 2006 @ 14:04 - by Josh Josh

tHANKS FOR THE INTERVIEW. i NEVER HEARD OF ATMOSPHERE UNTIL TODAY WHEN I READ THIS INTERVIEW. sO I DOWNLOADED SOME OF HIS SONGS AND THIS GUY IS DOPE. i'M FROM NYC THE HIP-HOP CAPITAL OF THE WORLD YET I NEVER HEARD OF THIS GUY BEFORE. hE HAS A COUPLE DOPE TRACKS.

April 21st, 2006 @ 10:13 - by Jordanisme