It was weird day to interview Slug. The plan was to talk about Atmosphere, his long-running rap duo with running partner Ant, and the excellent lineup for their Winter Carnival Tour with Sage Francis, R.A. the Rugged Man, Kool Keith and Mr. Dibbs, which comes to Brooklyn Bowl on Jan. 15. The plan also included a chat about Atmosphere’s excellent new record Jestures, 2025’s excellent crop of Unc Rap and the challenges of keeping it fresh in middle age. But then an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Atmosphere’s hometown.
I generally try to avoid current events when I interview someone. The world provides few opportunities to talk exclusively about art, and I try to cherish every minute of every phoner without letting the outside world drag its shit-smeared shoes across the transom. It’s a matter of respect for the art and the artist. But that day — as Minneapolis closed school because students were getting tear gassed and harassed by federal officers, and fascist goons started going door to door hunting for immigrants — I couldn’t really ignore the outside world.
I have nothing but sympathy for Slug, who had to spend the afternoon talking to strangers while his city was under attack. When we spoke, he was about to leave his family and friends behind to trek across a country fraying at the edges and tearing down the middle. That shit is stressful and I don’t think I helped. I don’t think I could help. We are all under attack. My city (Boston, where I grew up and live now), your city (where I lived for a long time), their city — are all under attack by people that embody the very worst that America has to offer. They are killing poets and kidnapping delivery drivers. Letting that shit slide, ignoring it for the sake of expediency, would be adding to the stack of atrocity and injustices we as a nation are piling up at a terrifying rate.
And so we do the work, even if we don’t get to talk about the work we wanted to in the way work deserves. Along those lines, I need to recommend the work of Racket MN, a group of alt-weekly veterans in Minneapolis that are doing some great reporting on this tragedy. These are the times when local reporting is most important — our national media is clearly compromised by corporate interest and oligarchical interference — so give those folks a few of your clicks. They are hard-working and in harm’s way, reporting with the kind of knowledge and tenacity that only local reports can bring to the table.
So, edited for length and clarity, here is a colloquy between two guys named Sean just trying to talk about rap music while the world descends into chaos.
How are you doing today? Are you in Minneapolis right now?
I am.
How's the vibe there? It seems like a stressful couple of days.
Yeah, it's been a long ride. The last few days have been obviously even more impactful than the last few months, but every so often something pops off here. And whether it's the police doing something, or somebody killed a few elected officials here — it's just a lot, man. And it's almost though the city doesn't get a chance to grieve from one thing to the next, which is crazy to me because we're not as big as Boston. We're a small town, we’re more in line with the Nashville. And so what is it about this town? What is it about St. Louis? What is it about these Midwest places that seem to reflect back to America to show America, “This is who the fuck you are?”
It seems like Minneapolis, St. Louis and others are “quintessentially American” towns, and Boston is different.
Boston would make sense [as a place where major traumatic events happen regularly] though, because Boston is gigantic and Boston is an epicenter for travel. It's a hub for art. It's a hub for entertainment. There's so much economy. And there's also so much poverty — there's so many broken things in Boston. There are so many broken things in Houston. Houston is gigantic. A couple of cities in Florida are massive. Los Angeles is massive. Minneapolis is not on par with that.
So that's why I would understand if Chicago was constantly the [city in the news regarding horrific events]. Now, don't get it twisted: Chicago's in the news a lot and it always has been, but it's a big city, so it makes sense. It's a huge town. Minneapolis is not huge, so I just don't understand why we seem to have this role for the world instead of Nashville. Just as an example — I love Nashville, I'm getting twisted.
Nashville has experienced the ICE incursion too. But it hasn't seen the crazy escalation that we've seen in Minneapolis recently, and it’s intense how Minneapolis has become that focal point. I don't get it. Everybody's got friends in Minneapolis, and it makes you ask, “Why are you fucking with Minneapolis?”
I think especially, we were shown by the reaction to the murder of George Floyd that, if you push Minneapolis — if you want Minneapolis to go buck wild and set shit on fire — they will. [Now it’s] the citizens’ job to not fall for that, to not go buck wild, because if we do, they're going to ... OK, see, at this point, we're starting to go into a territory that is going to show the rabbit holes that I go down with my beliefs and with how I believe that the whole fucking thing is rigged against us, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm not sure that I'm ready for that.
That is absolutely respectable. I didn't mean to put you on the spot.
No, no, it’s not your fault. … I'm going to chill and I'm just going to step back and say, look, man: These people here, it's a community of people who will fight for each other. We might not like each other, but we will still help you get out of the snow. If your car goes in the ditch, we all hop out and help you get out of the ditch. And I feel like this is testing us and we're going to step to it and take the job. We will take this responsibility. … We're going to reflect to everybody else that this is who you all are, and you can all be like this.
If it could happen in Minneapolis, it can happen anywhere. I'm sure it sucks that this interview happened now, and that this is all going on, but thank you for talking about that. Let's talk about this upcoming tour, how you decided to go out this winter and what your plans are for the next few weeks.
Well, I need to build an underground bunker, so I figured I would go play some shows. The truth of it is I wanted to do a tour with some friends. I did one last winter and it was really fun, and I forgot how much fun it is to tour in the winter. There's a particular vibe, specifically in the more colder-climate cities, where when people are inside for a show, they are very happy to be there. They are very happy to be out of their house, out of their cold car, not shoveling their sidewalks, but at a show. And you can't really create that vibe in the summer. In the summer, it's a different vibe. It's great too.
But this is one that really speaks to me, because this is how I grew up. … I'm standing in line and I'm freezing, and then once I get inside, I'm going to have as much fun as possible for the next four hours. And this is what I wanted to create. So that's why we've initiated the Winter Carnival Tour. Obviously, when we put this together, it wasn't winter yet. But I still had in mind: “Who would I like to bring out? Who would I like to invite to come out with us?” And so I feel like we've got a great cast of characters for such a party.
When was your first winter tour?
Oh man, my first winter tour was in 2000.
Ooh, that was a cold one. That's gnarly. Do you have any particularly wintery adventures that you've had on tour?
Well, nowadays, the real goal is to not hurt yourself because we're all old. And so we probably won't go sledding on this tour. But with that said, we have gone sledding on tour before. For us, because we grew up [with very cold winters, the cold] doesn't affect us like it might affect somebody who didn't grow up in this. At the same time, it's also very familiar to us, and so we know what parts to take advantage of. So I don't get too mad at the cold, because I'm used to it. And I don't go: "Oh my God, it's snowing. Let's go outside. It's snowing." I'm not like that either. I know how to get my job done. And so in 2025, for me, the Winter Carnival means trying not to slip on the ice and trying to provide a warm, safe space for people to make parties.
