Slug, born Sean Daley, is 42 and having some of the best years of his life. He is hailed as a God MC to so many children of the Midwest Winter.
This is my testimony: I hailed him so at the tender age of 13, in a Maryland winter far less furious, where I found no other kids who dive-bombed into the Rhymesayers catalog like I did.
I spoke of Atmosphere in several ways as a youth. I spoke aimlessly, not knowing that Slug and Anthony “Ant” Davis were a team for a very long time. I spoke ignorantly, as my racial awareness had yet to be cultivated; I assumed Slug was only a white man. But most of all, I spoke proudly in defense of my prepubescent backpack lean that privileged You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having over the earlier work of Atlanta (trap) God MCs Gucci Mane and Waka Flocka Flame.
I idolized Slug’s narratives. I fawned over how Ant’s beats didn’t sound like the three hip-hop stations always on in my mother’s blue Honda Accord. My first concert was on the 9:30 Club D.C. stop of the “When Life Gives You Lemons Tour,” where I left a demo with my bald face in a God Loves Ugly cover generator outside of the tour bus in the rain. I MySpaced the group page afterward; they didn’t find it, but gave me an address to send it to. I never did.
My first rap releases sounded like carbon copies of Slug. Thus, when he tweeted some of my most successful musical efforts this past winter, the nostalgia smacked me with a wave of satisfaction that my shots in the dark were noticed by a man whose CDs remain on my dresser at home. I reminisced over my friends jabbing at me in ninth grade about how I would one day get signed to Rhymesayers.
Quite frankly, the embers of that dream still burn.
I graduated high school, felt older than I was, and shed the backpacker for a balanced rap palette that allotted as much A$AP Mob as Atmosphere in my eardrums. But as confirmed by my pre-Freakfest phone chat with Daley, who will headline the Capitol Stage at midnight Nov. 1, growing and observing how hip-hop continues to evolve can do nothing but epitomize how one must learn that it is fine to be fine with everything.
Michael Penn II: What type of live show are you gonna bring: band, DJ, both?
Slug: Two DJs, Anthony and DJ Plain Ole Bill.
MPII: Why the switch-up from the band? I know your live show has changed a lot over the years…
S: When I started the band, it was because I wanted the ceiling to be higher, I wanted to learn more. I wasn’t scared anymore, man! I was getting on stage with the DJ and running through my set drunk with no problem, and so I knew it was time to scare myself again. When it was time to stop working with the band, it was time to push again. So we got the two DJs, and at the same time Anthony is also running a bunch of toys—effects, Ableton—we’re basically creating our tracks, but we’re running ’em through Ableton so we could separate the sounds like you would a band.
My sound guy, he has access to all of the tracks. Oh, the hi-hats? Let’s see what happens when we get rid of the hi-hats. Oh, this [sound]? Let’s see what happens… I like to overstate it, cuz I’m a rapper and that’s what we do. We got a bunch of mad scientists all working on the show together. In my world, there’s more room for shit to go wrong, and that’s where the fear comes to play.
That was the big part of having a band, because now we were dependent on four people to do their shit right. And if any one of them fucks up, it could fuck up all of us! And that was where the fear and the anxiety came in, and to me that’s an important part of the show. Now, not only can any one of us fuck it up, but technology problems could occur. To me: it’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time on stage. For the audience: eh, I don’t know if they really like it or not, not my problem.
MPII: Have you ever been to Freakfest before? Do you know what to expect?
S: Well, it’s Madison: they like to drink already. So imagine them turning it up to like, 15, and dressing up in costumes and shit. I kind of anticipate it to be a very inebriated mess, which, technically… when I perform shows, usually I’m the drunkest person in the room. I have a feeling that’s not going to be the case, so that takes a lot of pressure off of me! (Laughter) In fact, I might not even drink! I might just kick it sober!
I’m not super worried about it, I’m not nervous; I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun. I’ve always been good at crowd control—not the kind that riot police do, but more like MC shit. Talking to the crowd, I know how to put smiles on people faces; I know how to get the audience to reflect what it is I’m feeling and vice-versa. Plus, I got a couple of homies that are playing too, and that’s just gonna magnify the whole situation.
MPII: Think about the home-region advantage, too, because people are gonna be geeked as fuck. People might travel for that, because I don’t think you can get a ticket for an Atmosphere show that cheap anywhere else.
S: That’s a good point… how much are the tickets?
MPII: Eight dollars.
S: Eight dollars?
MPII: Eight bucks, yeah.
S: What the fuck, that’s probably why the Chicago show is sellin’ so slow…
MPII: … Maybe, cuz it’s just like—
S: (Laughter) Chicago’s selling just fine, I’m just fuckin’ around!
MPII: It’s probably gonna be a drunken mess. It used to be an understated thing where people would just come and be drunk as shit in the street, but the city didn’t have nothin’ to do with it. So it would cost them a fuckton of money. People would get sexually assaulted, fights, and a bunch of—
S: Man, are you kiddin’ me? There’s shit on YouTube! They call it “Halloween Riots” and shit! Money got involved, people got involved like ‘Hey! If we do this right, we can make some money off of it and we can contain it and make it funner for people.’ But at the end of the day, I still anticipate nudity and vomit.
MPII: And a little racism, here and there.
S: A little racism here and there?
MPII: I mean, costume-wise. I’ve seen people dressed up as prisoners, there’s a lot of Ray Rice shit going around now…
S: Man, that’s fuckin’ unfortunate. So people are going straight up in blackface as Ray Rice type-shit?
MPII: You get the occasional ‘I’m gonna wear a sombrero, and I’m like 1/10th Mexican, so it doesn’t matter.’ Shit like that.
S: They call that appropriation nowadays, that’s the new word that’s been makin’ the blogs… It’s interesting man, I like how you threw in, since I’m a 1/10th Mexican, and since great-grandma was Latino, that’s okay for me to do this, because that is such a large part of white privilege that people don’t talk about.
We’ve had a lot of conversations about white privilege over the last five years, and that’s good cuz we’re trying to open it up so that even those people who have benefits from white privilege can understand what’s going on. But one of the things that I think doesn’t get talked about is the privilege of also claiming ethnic privilege.
For instance, I come from—let’s just keep it simple—a mixed-race background. But, I try to be careful how much I talk about that publicly because it sends the wrong message sometimes. It’s one of those things you gotta use and speak on at the right time. It’s not something that needs to be addressed unless I actually have a positive agenda for it; otherwise, it just seems like I’m tryna name-drop what kinda bloods I got in me! In hip-hop, that comes hand-in-hand with someone who appears to be trying to claim authenticity.
I’m glad you brought it up, and I’m glad that it’s something that’s getting spoken on more and more, although it’s kinda odd it got brought up talking about Freakfest, but whatever the doorway we gotta use, let’s use it.
MPII: You just made me jump like seven questions down. I didn’t think you were gonna bring it up, because you never bring it up, but since you brought it up… you know what climate we’re in with police and black and brown people. What have your interactions been like with police? Have they differed from you benefitting from white privilege? People that interact with you… can they tell you’re a mixed man, has that affected police interactions? Or is it just a face value thing?
S: It’s interesting, a lot of it is a face value thing, but it also depends on how you dress. When I was younger, up until my last year in high school, I had very long hair. I used to wear it in a ponytail most of the time. There was no benefit at that point because most people that saw me presumed I was Native American. Even as far as the long-hair white boy point, I didn’t wear my hair like them; I wore it in a ponytail, very well-kept, and I wore a jean jacket. And so motherfuckers always used to assume I was Native. When I was a kid, I used to get fucked with by the cops a lot more. Then when I cut my hair… I didn’t get fucked with unless I deserved to get fucked with, if that makes any sense. I wasn’t gettin’ stopped and fucked with for no reason—it was only when I actually kinda had it comin’.
That was a major change that I saw, which was interesting because I grew my hair out again as an older man… shit, like, 2008, I was rockin’ the ponytail again, I had grown it out. And at that point, I was a grown-ass man, and so… I dare you to fuckin’ profile me now! I am a mouthpiece! It’s 2008: I was on top of the world as far as underground rap went, I will use the situation and make a song about it! And nothing ever happened of course, cuz that’s how nature works.
But I tell you what, when I had a Mohawk… shit was weird. I was a grown-ass man with a Mohawk and I was only doing it because a) it was funny, b) I actually had a condition going on for about a year called alopecia, where I was losing my hair. A Mohawk was the only thing I could grow that looked okay. So I was like, well fuck it, I’ve never had a Mohawk, I’ll do it. And that year man… I was fucked with by cops, I had old women scared of me, and it was funny because it wasn’t just white women… it was all old women!
But the interesting thing about that is that’s a lifestyle choice, you chose to wear your hair like that. So, if people react, you can’t really be like ‘Why are you reacting to me?!?’ That’d be like you reacting to me if I was walking around with a, uh… holding on to a dead bird. And I’m not comparing people’s Mohawks to people who walk around carrying dead birds, but I’m just trying to come up with some kind of example. But you’re not used to seeing a guy with a Mohawk, especially my age, so yes, you’re nervous to stand behind me in line at Walgreens, I get it.
Truth be told, man, I haven’t necessarily had to be too concerned about the police since I was a kid. There’s another side to that though: me and a lot of my friends haven’t put ourselves into positions or made lifestyle choices that would dictate us having to worry about cops anyway. I don’t go out. I’m not out there. If I get pulled over, it’s because I was doing something wrong, but I could be driving—I’m driving right now, down Lyndale Avenue—and if a cop pulled up next to me, he wouldn’t look at me twice. However, driving the truck I’m driving, if I was 22-years-old and black, hell yeah he’s gonna look at me! And he’s gonna be like ‘Who is this little motherfucker in this truck?’
MPII: That might be one word he’d say, but… you know.
S: Yeah yeah yeah, but that’s… the word that I’m gonna say!
MPII: I feel like there’s always times and places where you elect to step in and commentate on certain things, given your perspective. Have you ever felt explicitly responsible as an artist to comment on anything in a political landscape?
S: I did feel like that for a while, until I found myself in a forum where people didn’t know who I was and I still found out that I needed to be outspoken. I think that it’s got less to do with my music and more to do with my humanity and probably my upbringing. The music is good because it gives me a doorway to some ears who might not care what I got to say, but ultimately, even without the music, I probably would be a very opinionated dude trying to talk shit to people who would listen anyway. Especially when I look back on my youth, I was involved in a lot of youth groups even before I was really trying to be a rapper. Thanks to Uncle Chuck D and KRS, there was a push for us just to be conscious... as kids—I’m talking about, 15, 16-year-old kids—to be conscious and aware of what’s going on in our communities.
There’s a couple of parks here in Minneapolis, Powderhorn and McRae, and we’d go kick it and there was always an older brother that would be there to talk to us and inform us of shit. And because of rap music, it made us open and eager to hear what these dues would have to say to us and apply it. Now, applying it back then meant going to school and talkin’ shit to other people, and standin’ for somethin’ or telling a white boy off or something! And as an adult, because got so involved in hip-hop that I forgot that, as a kid, we were already kind of on that. Sometimes I actually wonder if I’m active enough; with my voice and my status, for whatever it’s worth, why am I not more active?
And I turn to some of my colleagues, and I talk about this kind of shit with [Brother] Ali or I Self [Divine] or some of the friends of mine that are even far more active than me, and they’re like ‘You know what? Don’t trip on yourself about it, because at the end of the day, you’re doing your best and you do have to balance everything. In order to have the voice you have, you have to maintain that voice; sometimes you gotta play the background, or sometimes you gotta play the foreground. This ain’t like you get to be wide receiver and that’s all you play; you gotta be ready to fill in any position that you can when called upon.
MPII: I ask you that question in particular because there’s a Bossip video from the 2014 Bet Hip-Hop Awards Red Carpet where this reporter, who was asking really shitty questions in general, asked Young Thug a really oddly-framed question about Mike Brown and how black men are policed and he said: “Leave that up with the critics and the laws and all that other shit. We having fun, we iced out, we having money. That’s how we doing it.” Then she asked if it’s an artist’s job to respond to things like that and he was like “No.”
S: I don’t think it’s an artist’s job to do that. The funny thing about art is that it requires an audience. So to me, I think it’s an artist’s job to emote or push whatever that artist is about, whatever that artist feels. I don’t want an artist who doesn’t have an opinion on something to give an opinion on something just for the sake of it.
MPII: That’s exactly how I responded, but as a person of color, there’s that line that’s straddled whether or not there’s an inherent responsibility just because he’s black.
S: That shit ain’t nothing new, though, man. Even during the Civil Rights movement, there was a lot of black artists who kept their mouths shut because they didn’t wanna fuck up their money. To be real, there’s a part of me that understands that because it’s one thing to be like ‘Yo, I’m puttin’ this down for us as a people!’ But there’s also this fear of: you could put it down all fuckin’ day long and it might not fuckin’ work. But if I can fuckin’ get at least me and my immediate surroundings up out this bitch, I gotta do whatever I gotta do to do that. I’m not gonna judge anybody, man. I’m not gonna judge Young Thug for not having an opinion.
Now, don’t get me wrong: we can. We’re allowed to judge whoever the fuck we wanna judge. In the same breath, though: I don’t know what hood that dude’s from. Technically, some of these hoods are so fuckin’ bad that, first and foremost, you gotta worry about getting yourself and your siblings up out that bitch.
MPII: The fuck up outta there, by any means.
S: Yeah! And so in that regard, it’s a really hard one for me to judge, man. I can’t be that dude, and don’t get me wrong, I’ve been that dude in the past. The only reason I have the perspective I got now is probably cuz I’m old. But when I was younger, I was a lot more judgmental. You remember in the ’90s when we had to pick sides: do we wanna get jiggy wit’ it or do we wanna be conscious? Now, that I’m older, I realize that it’s all ok. Every side of it is okay. But to put him in the position of—
MPII: “Black Person Spokesman.”
S: Yes, exactly! That’s not okay, at least to me. There are people out there who take that role because they’re built for that role, and there are people out there who are not built for that role. Young Thug, as a “Black Person Spokesman”, is a story of a have-not becoming a have. And that goes a long way, in ways that sometimes we don’t necessarily wanna acknowledge. Instead, we wanna drag a motherfucker down and be like ‘Aye, he ain’t doing shit for the community!’ But the truth is… he is! Maybe he’s doing it accidentally, but he is because he is another have-not becoming a have, and employing other have-nots! He’s giving motherfuckers jobs! And that’s some shit that a lot of motherfuckin’ activists ain’t doin’!
We gotta cut the bullshit, and really just take everything in for what it is. There’s duty to all of this, there’s value to all of this. It doesn’t have to be so fucking cut-and-dry or, for lack of better words, it doesn’t have to be black-and-white. You can actually figure out how to take any of this and apply it, especially in contemporary times. All of this shit’s important. Young Thug is not out here dancing a jig for the Republicans… that’s all that fuckin’ matters!
MPII: But… you saw that video of Bobby Shmurda that came out in the last 24 hours, though?
S: I did, and that motherfucker was trying to get a job! But trust me… Bobby Shmurda does not give a fuck about the GOP! He’s trying to get a job so that he can do what Young Thug is doin’. And I feel that. I’m not that. That’s not me. But I feel that.
MPII: But I’m fucking scared for him. That dude’s younger than me; he’s a Crip from upstate New York. What the fuck? That’s a direct parallel from what you would show in a lecture unit about minstrelsy. He’s on the damn table, spinning around, like a new toy they’re trying to get to go against the phone next season. It’s fucking scary, what do we do?
S: I don’t know, but he made that choice to do that, and the rest of us get to just watch and see how it play out. But I’m not gonna judge the dude for it, because you said the key words there: he’s younger than you. We’re talking about somebody whose decision-making and reasoning here is not wrong, not for his age. He wanna make it. Michael [Jackson] was doing that shit at 5! Are we gonna blame Michael? No, but we can blame his dad who was 30!
He’s a kid, man, so I can’t be mad at a kid for thinkin’ he can dance his way out the hood. Especially considering the hood he comes from. In his reality, he thinks he either gotta get this or he gonna have to die or kill somebody. And I don’t mean to speak for him, obviously… I’m totally profiling this motherfucker right now, I don’t mean to.
MPII: Go off what we have: “selling crack since like the 5th grade…”
S: Going off what we got, I’m saying this: what he did in that video is more positive and progressive than some of his other options. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t cosign what he did because I’m too old to do some shit like that. I’ve seen and learned too many things. But I’m not gonna judge him for it, because I would have to put myself in his shoes to understand. And right now he’s gonna be the joke of the blog circuit, but it’s ok, it’s only gonna be for three days. That shit goes away after three days.
MPII: If he goes away after three days, does he go back to the hood and die?
S: Who knows? Maybe he will continue to escalate and make a name for himself. But that embarrassing moment that got caught on tape and put on the internet will only last for three days. Not only that, but thank God we got it out the way early. Cuz now, he can maintain a career for three years. At least this shit didn’t show up three years later. We got it out the way, right away. At least, for the sake of Bobby.
Now he can learn from it, and a) either control his environment so that shit don’t get caught on tape ever again, or b) learn from it and go ‘You know what? I won’t never do no shit like that again.’ And at the end of the day, he’s a kid, man. We want these kids to be grown-ups.
Because of your situation, and because of [you being 20] and how aware you are, it’s easy for you to look at Bobby and be like ‘What the fuck are you doin’, motherfucker?’ But I’m 42, so when I look at what Bobby’s doing, I’m like ‘Well, yeah, he’s a kid.’ What he know about coonin’? He’s a kid. He don’t know what he’s doing. I’m not gonna say he’s coonin’, I’m not gonna say none of that shit cuz he’s a kid! If he was 35—
MPII: Then it’s obvious: get the fuck off the table, you dumbass.
S: Exactly! But he’s a kid. I was 20 once… man, if at 20, if you’d have told me ‘these motherfuckers might give you a job,’ man I’d have jumped there and tried breakdancing. I promise you I would have… and I was kind of aware! I was socially conscious!
MPII: And you had the Chuck D and the Public Enemy people are so thirsty for now!
S: Exactly!
