Atmosphere frontman and Rhymesayers capo Slug (born Sean Daley) has carved out a singular niche as a darkly comic, confessional alt-rap heartthrob with a huge female following. Atmosphere (Slug plus producer Ant) is one of the few alternative, independent rap acts that regularly sells more than 100,000 copies of any given album, but while major labels have courted the duo, they've stuck to their independent roots by signing a licensing deal with punk-rock fixture Epitaph. Rhymesayers initially released albums from largely Minnesota-based acts like Atmosphere, Brother Ali, and Eyedea & Abilities, but it's grown into a respected national label boasting acts as accomplished and diverse as cult New York supervillain MF Doom, Seattle True-Schooler Boom Bap Project, and Chicago's Psalm One. The A.V. Club recently had a freewheeling, candid conversation with the always-outspoken Slug about his battles with the bottle, the sexual component of performing, and why he probably won't sleep with your ex.
The A.V. Club: You're perceived as a very honest, intimate artist—
Slug: I'm full of shit, though. Everybody puts me in that category, as that guy who's really honest and wears his shit on his sleeve, but it's all fake, man. I only do this for pussy. So people get it.
AVC: Do you feel like there's a spiritual element to performing live?
S: I don't really know how to describe the rush that I get onstage. I guess I would compare it to hang-gliding, but I've never hang-glided. Or snowboarding, but I've never snowboarded. All I know is that the rush I get scares the shit out of me, and at the same time, I'm addicted to it. People ask about all the touring that I do, and think that I must be making tons of money. Actually not, man. I spend so much fucking money on touring. And not even to the point where I'm complaining about it, but more so that I want those things around. I want to be able to bring 15 people on the road with me. I want to be able to do all this shit. I really don't give a fuck about the money. I know how much money moves around for touring, but I do a pretty good job of making sure none of that money goes into my pocket. Me and the guys I'm on stage with get such a fucking rush out of it—it's addictive. When I stop, I'm probably going to have to go to treatment.
AVC: Two very popular metaphors people use when talking about touring are sex and drugs.
S: Those are the obvious metaphors, because you get laid a lot and people offer you drugs.
AVC: Do you get a sexual thrill out of performing?
S: I believe it's better than sex, because I can hide my agenda. I can hide the selfish side of it so much better. With sex, let's face it, you can be an unselfish lover and still make her come 250 times, but in the end, you're still going to come. With performing, I'm not really looking for an orgasm. I'm looking for the foreplay. The little subtle moments of the show are the parts that really get me off and scare me. I wouldn't really compare performing to sex, because performing scares the shit out of me, literally. I have to shit before I go onstage every time. I get butterflies that have fangs that start up about an hour and a half before the set. And I don't even know what to do about it. I feel like I have straight-up stomach issues because of performing, and I don't know how to make that stop, but I feel like, in a way, I'm actually addicted to that fear. It's the only place in the world I've found that fear.
AVC: Is it adrenaline?
S: I'm not a doctor, I don't even know if it's adrenaline. I don't know what it is, to be honest. I've had adrenaline. Adrenaline happens when someone pulls a gun on you. Adrenaline is what happens when you know you're about to get beat up. Adrenaline to me is an excitement, but I don't know if I would call it adrenaline. I just know it affects me mentally and physically in a major way.
AVC: It doesn't get easier now that you've been touring consistently for 10 years?
S: Absolutely not. I've never once had a show where it was easier. I think it's worse. I think it was easier when I was younger. When I was "I really want these people to see me rap, 'cause if they see me rap, they're going to think I'm awesome." I think now the people who are watching me rap, they already know what I'm about. They know what they're there for. Even if it's their first time, they know why they're there. It's not like I'm getting up in front of a room full of people who've never heard of me. I think that it's harder now.
AVC: Because people have high expectations that you have to live up to?
S: Man, I can expect people having higher expectations with me. Especially people that are familiar with me.
AVC: Would you concede that you have a revered reputation as a live performer?
S: I don't know if I would consider myself a great live act. Tom Waits is a great live act. Fucking Dave Grohl is a great live act. People who can make you feel comfortable and confident while you're watching them, to the point where your confidence even outgrows their confidence, are great live acts. I don't know yet that I've reached a point where I consider myself a great live act. I know for a fact that I give 122 percent pretty much every time I get on the stage, so I get an E for effort. And maybe because I get an E for effort three times a year in your city, eventually you can be fooled into thinking I am a great live act.
AVC: The last time we talked to you, you talked about your tour being like group therapy or a cathartic ritual. Do you think that's something you need to do?
S: I think that at this part of my life, the phase I'm in, yeah. I haven't really found another way to accomplish what I'm accomplishing when I perform. I haven't figured out a way to scare the shit out of myself in a manner that I appreciate better than performing. Catharsis, that was one particular tour in general. I was trying to figure out if I could make my work work for me in a way that I haven't tried before. I was dealing with a handful of things, most notably a lot of alcohol. I was really attempting to use that tour as my 12-step program to get off of the alcohol.
AVC: How did that work out?
S: It was lovely. I didn't quit completely, but I've gone down from about eight beers and four shots a night to three beers a week. I owe a lot of that to that tour. I basically put as much as I could into that tour across the board. I did as much press as I could on a daily basis. Every in-store that they would possibly let me do—I would show up at your community center. I would talk to kids about rap. I basically went as professional as I could and as time-consuming as I could to really distract the fuck out of me and get me to stop abusing my body with alcohol and fast food, and essentially it worked. I haven't eaten a Whopper Junior in over a year, and my drinking has gone way down. I can't even remember the last time I was drunk. Now, if I do have a beer, it's pretty much social, and it's pretty much 'cause it tastes great with my cigarette.
AVC: Do you miss drinking?
S: No actually, I resent drinking. I can't believe I gave so much of my life to it. So much of my time. It was easily the most time-consuming, unproductive thing that I could be doing for the last 10 years. I'm not preaching straight-edge, and I'm not preaching to people not to drink. I think I had an issue, myself. I know plenty of people who don't have that issue. When it comes to alcohol, I think it's more about you as a person, and you keeping tabs on what the fuck you're doing with your life and staying productive. As productive as I was during my phase of drinking, I made a lot of records and I did a lot of tours, I'm trying to imagine what I could have accomplished without the alcohol there. It amazes me that I didn't see that sooner. I didn't see that I could have taken things further had I not been drinking so much. I work with a family called Rhymesayers, and each of them is on the ball, and everybody's doing their thing, everybody giving everything 130 percent, and I feel like I was the one that was drinking out of our unit. Nobody else was drinking like that, and I feel that my drinking even stole away from a lot of the progress that Rhymesayers could have made.
AVC: Yet Rhymesayers has grown exponentially all the same.
S: Sure, but I just try to imagine how much more exponentially it could have grown. Had I not been drinking and had an additional three hours a day to put in the phone work, for fuck's sake. It's like the things that I could have been doing instead of drinking. The MySpace page could be up to a million now.
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