The Fifth Element of Hip-Hop

Minneapolis MC and Rhymesayers crew founding member Slug is the reluctant leader of a growing army. The independent rapper and force behind the group Atmosphere (Slug and 1200 Hobos' DJ Mr. Dibbs) has suddenly found himself in the enviable position of poster boy for a growing national movement of hip-hop fans who can't - or won't - relate to the established tenets of commercial hip-hop. Rather than floss in a Bentley flashing bling surrounded by rented, bikini-clad hoochies, Slug tends to stick to the jeans-and-T-shirt style. Rather than rap about bitches, 40s and gats, Slug's delivery and lyrical content tend to be a bit more insightful and intelligent, personal and introspective. His older releases - the Sad Clown Bad Dub tape series, the Se7ens album and the Lucy Ford EP releases, to name a few - are hard to find in their original versions, but have been bootlegged ad infinitum by fans who share their Atmosphere fanaticism online. When Slug finally dropped his long-anticipated 2002 release, God Loves Ugly, in May, it exploded on a national level, finding instant favor with backpackers, college kids and non-gangsta' rap fans, as well a whole slew of new fans who might have otherwise never scratched the surface of indie rap. Slug's latest EP release, Felt: A Tribute to Christina Ricci (with Def Jux and Living Legends' rapper Murs) just came out, and is available at select locations (try www.hiphopsite.com).
Slug, however, is hesitant to accept the role of hero at the head of the indie rap pack, presenting himself instead as a self-assured but slightly socially insecure person, a vibe that comes across unmistakably in his music. As Slug explained during a phone conversation from home in Minneapolis, he just kind of does his thing. Everything that comes with success has to be taken in stride.

A popular Slug story is how you came out of a broken home in Minneapolis, and your rhymes seem like they could be rooted in that kind of past. Is that when or why you started rhyming?
I doubt it. I think I was just influenced by friends, by my surroundings. But we had a very Neanderthal-like hip-hop movement going on here. Of course, we were about five years behind the East Coast, but those of us who got into it here in the mid-'80s got into it hardcore. We were total fanatics; we were like the Trekkie convention of hip-hop. We learned and mastered all four elements and even tried to make up a couple of new elements just so we could say we did our part. Like, anything, man - 'The fifth element of hip-hop is marketing! No wait, the fifth element of hip-hop is oral sex!' I mean anything. So basically, I can break, I can paint, I can rap, I can, um…drive a car.

Out of all four elements, what about rapping made you concentrate on the mic rather than on the dance floor or the sides of train cars?
It was the only one that I was really good at. It was my last choice, actually. I started off breakin', and I can do it, but then I discovered graffiti and thought, 'Well, I can break, but I can draw my ass off.' So I decided that I was gonna get into graffiti 'cause I was never really that tight of a dancer, like I never learned how to spin on my face or any of that kinda shit. But I also always bought records, and one day I thought, 'You know what, man, these graf kids are on some next-level shit and I'm not even gonna try to keep up with them. I know, I'll be a DJ!' Actually, I was the DJ for Atmosphere when we started out, I wasn't the MC, that was Spawn. As time went on, I started rapping with him and we started using other people as DJs, and then he left the group and now I pretty much just rap. Once in a while, just for fun to impress all the nine-year-olds on my block, I pull out the cardboard and bust a couple of moves out front here. I go see my chiropractor right after that.

People say that the scene in Minneapolis is great, if you can stand the winter.
Keep away, man, it's my secret garden! But yeah, if you can handle the winters, it is the place to live, and I stand firmly by that…but stay away man, these are my women.

Another Synthesis editor interviewed [fellow Minneapolis musicians] Dillinger Four a couple of weeks ago, and they mentioned you as a key member of a big and tight-knit scene in Minneapolis, where rappers and punk rockers share stages. Is that the scene that you came up in?
That's something that I became a part of five or six years ago. Prior to that, I didn't even know that guitars even existed. Seriously, I was so hip-hop that it hurt, and I had no idea about this scene basically until I started dating white girls. That was about six or seven years ago, with my son's mom. When I started playing out in the scene here, people started noticing me and I started making friends, and before I knew it, I was going to big parties and sitting in with bands, and I realized something: There are 10 bands here that will stay solid as those 10 bands. There are another 500 hundred bands here that are gonna continue to interchange the same pieces, the same people, to make new bands every year. So it's kind of incestuous, and everybody knows you because you've either been in a band with them before or they used to fuck your girlfriend. I noticed something else about Minneapolis then, too: Because of where we're located, the next city that's big and worth going to is Chicago, and that's seven-and-a-half hours away. Nobody's really trying to make that trek just to see Fugazi play one night, you know? So what you've got here are a buncha people who want live music and who want art in general - photographers, painters, musicians - and all they got is each other, so they got no choice but to support each other. For a while, we were really lacking in the area of national bands coming through and playing, so everybody just got really good at what they were doing here, and now we've got this self-sufficient scene that can keep everybody happy and can keep everybody working, and we'd never have to have another band come visit our town again if we didn't want them to. The city really supports itself - and that's not just with music, but with all facets of art - and I think that stems from the fact that we really ain't got no choice. When it's winter, you're stuck inside your house for six months out of the fucking year. The other six months a year, you cut loose, go out and kick it, see the same people and make out with the same girls. It's fun, good times. And then, when I get older, I'm gonna buy a lawnmower and go door-to-door making 10 bucks a house mowing lawns.

When and how did the Rhymesayers come together?
It started as just a group of MCs and DJs that were all pretty dope and all got along because we had that in common, so we all just started going around to parties and ripping the mics, and we formed this family called Head Shot. From there, after some evolution, the cats that were serious about actually attempting to manufacture and distribute our own records formed Rhymesayers.

As an original member of Rhymesayers, do you think of yourself as one of the group's motivators?
No, I would say that Saddiq, who is basically my den mother, is who I would cite as my motivation. Even when I was going nuts, and even when I had moments when I needed Xanax, he was always the glue that kept us all together, even when we had issues with each other… [Slug gets distracted by the scene in the street outside his living room window.] Whoa, that is the tightest Monte Carlo I've seen all day. He's sitting out front too, like he knows something about the neighborhood…yo son, you're trippin'. Yeah, you better roll your window up before you go in, homie.

What's your neighborhood like?
Oh, it's half art fucks, half thugs. And the thugs don't fuck with the art fucks, and the art fucks don't fuck with the thugs. The art fucks continue to spread gonorrhea to each other and the thugs continue to beat the shit out of each other. Everybody just kinda handles their own shit. They know their places…we all know our place.

What's your place?
I get to walk the thin line between the two of 'em. I give gonorrhea to the thugs and I beat the shit outta the art fucks.

As a member of a self-contained, artist-driven crew, do you find yourself struggling between the roles of artist and businessman?
I struggled between the two for a while, and as of this year, I'm trying to go gung-ho directly into the artist side. I still have to mind the business because as an artist, there are still things that I want to do that require money. I still have to budget my end of things to make sure that I can still release a DVD, or that I can take a trip to go rehearse or whatever. So I still have to play that game a little, but I don't even know where my record sales are at right now. That's how ignorant I've tried to keep myself. I don't want anybody to give me any information about any dollar amounts, any sales figures, deadlines - and everybody in Rhymesayers has really had my back on this. I'm blessed because everybody who understands exactly why I'm doing it is down to shelter me from the information that I don't want.

So as long as your rent and your bills are paid and you don't have to work another job, you're happy?
Yeah, for now that's cool, and when it does come time to work another job, I've already got that job cut out. Like, at this point, if I had to quit rapping tomorrow, I could because I already know that I would take that spot behind the phones at the Rhymesayers office, or I would continue to play my role as the goofball A&R guy. It doesn't matter, because I know that I'm gonna somehow be an influence on this music and culture basically until somebody puts a bullet in my head.

God Loves Ugly has been referred to by at least one critic as "one (ugly) man's desperate search for beauty." Is that at all accurate?
That's interesting. I like it when people interpret my shit, because their interpretations are usually way tighter than what it's actually all about. To me, it was just a basic, broad statement. For me to have made it through some of the shit I've that been through, God must like me, and for me to make it as far as I have with my little 'career,' God must like me. Honestly, I prefer homeliness in general, man, I don't have pretty friends, I don't like pretty friends. So if God likes me, then God must like ugly. Naw fuck it, God loves ugly…hey, that sounds clever.

The album is a lot of people's first real exposure to your music. Is it an accurate representation of who you are now?
I think it's pretty close to where I am as a person. Of course, I didn't take into consideration that this might be a small breakthrough album, so if you've never heard any of my previous work, you might hear the new stuff and go, 'What the fuck is this guy rapping about?' But I guess that's one of the things that I'm not really gonna think about. I'm just gonna continue doing this my way, and if people don't like my way, well then they can go find some other self-deprecating fucking poster boy…and you're not allowed to use the words 'self-deprecating' in this article. If you do, you're fired.

Okay, but in a world of bling-bling hip-hop, don't you think that one of the most attractive things about your music is that self-deprecating element, something for people who just can't relate to the whole baller / gangsta' imagery of commercial rap?
I think I'm just a sexy motherfucker… No, really I think that people being able to relate to the music is like 90 percent of it. The funny thing is, though, when I play live, I look at the crowd, and I guarantee you that I wouldn't be able to relate to probably 90 percent of them. So it's kind of interesting how a lot of people have been able to catch what I'm talking about, but when I sit and I turn it around on them, I'm usually like, 'Man, where are you coming from with this stuff?' But then, I never did like the whole patchouli thing, you know? I mean, respect is respect and I'll give you a hug and all, but do me a favor and keep your dreads out of my mouth.
But I guess the fact is that they can relate to my shit, and I think also that, as much as a lot of us don't want to discuss it, there's a big 'white' factor going on here. You know, Mr. Lif could get up and say the same shit that I'm saying, but is he gonna have those same white boys in the crowd singing along, or is it because they see a white kid doing it that they can relate to it? I just want to kick them all and say, 'Dude, I'm not even white!' In fact, let's not really talk about the race thing in this interview, by the way. I've been trying my best to not bring it up because over the last few months a lot of writers have been white-boying me.

It certainly seems that, if the perception of an MC is that he or she is white, that's the first thing a critic mentions.
Yeah, and that's too bad. I understand that you've gotta do your job and you have to explain it to a bunch of people who don't know; as a writer you have to educate the people who are gonna read this, and a lot of times you need to simplify and bring it down to the lowest common denominator just for somebody to be interested enough to read it. But I think at this point, so many articles about so many rappers have started off as "The white rapper from…" that it doesn't even hold weight anymore. It's almost like any hip-hop article that's not in The Source is gonna start off like that now.

Sure, but you never read about the "black lead singer of Sevendust" or anything like that.
Exactly, although I'll bet you that when Sevendust was on the verge, they got plenty of that. It's just too bad that Lenny Kravitz is the poster boy for black rock music because he sucks, and it's too bad that Vanilla Ice was a poster boy for white rap 'cause he sucks. So yeah man, fuck it…fuck it all, I quit.

Does God Loves Ugly stand as a representation of your evolution as an artist from the Se7ens and Lucy Ford releases?
Naw, I think that God Loves Ugly and Se7ens are both lined with overcast, and Lucy Ford was kinda the oddball record. That was one like, 'Okay, this time it's personal, yo.' But that was never supposed to be an album, it just was supposed to be three vinyl EPs. After I gave Fat Beats [Records & Distribution] the first two, I had one left to do, but I was going on tour so we just decided to press the three EPs onto a CD so that we could make some fuckin' money for Subway sandwiches an' shit on tour. It ended up being liked by people, so we ended up pressing a lot of them. Initially we were only going to press 2000 copies, and the originals didn't even have UPC codes, so there's 2000 kids out there who have got some serious eBay shit, yo. But it sold well, critics liked it and girls cried, so we ended up flippin' it and treating it like a real album because, you know, we like to exploit and manipulate what we love.

What's the story behind your obsession with Christina Ricci?
Are you serious? Forehead, forehead, forehead…there's a nice little pun in there too. And I like the pre-Atkins diet Ricci, before she went on the protein diet. And why do you think she got on that? She knows the deal, man, she knows about us. But I liked her more when she was thicker and a little pastier, and now she's all cleaned up. See, here's the thing dude, and it's been like this ever since I was a kid - I like my black girls clean and I like my white girls dirty. And man, Christina Ricci was like the dirtiest, she was so naughty…c'mon dude, she was Wednesday Addams. She was, like, playing an eight-year-old slut…I can still put that movie in and jerk off all over my own belly. Oh God, and she was just a kid then, what am I saying?! I don't even need to fuck her, man, I just wanna kiss the small of her back. But now it's gotten to the point where it's obsessive. Even though the Atkins fucked her up - because she lost some weight and I'm not really a skinny-girl kind of guy - but I still think she's the dope shit, and now I'm just obsessed with her. I have to have it, and no man is going to stand in my way.

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