Atmosphere, Mr. Dibbs, Micranots, Brother Ali & Oddjobs

Say what you will about shows at the CSU, Chico campus; at least they start on time. Sure, they may be held on a dry campus, but they always do an impeccable job with the sound and lighting. Easier to find fault with would be the audience in attendance that night, but that’d be like shooting fish in a barrel. The important thing is the music.
The night began with Minnesota’s Oddjobs, who are three MCs (Nomi, Crescent Moon and Advizer) as well as DJ Anatomy and DJ Deetalx, the latter of whom appeared to be mainly interested in sound manipulation. A subdivision of a larger crew who call themselves Cases of Mistaken Identity, they presented a convincing set of hip-hop that erred on the side of consciousness, and while they had a strong stage presence and funky, surprisingly intricate beats, their style began to veer too far into maudlin histrionics for my liking; at one point in their set, they asked “anyone who hates their father to put their hands in the air,” echoing El-P’s “Stepfather Factory” and making most people visibly uncomfortable. Still, their style was solid, and the freestyle about Chico that name-checked Madison Bear Garden and the Wildcats was impressive.
Next, after a refreshingly brief five-minute break, Brother Ali took the stage. To borrow a phrase from KRS-One, Brother Ali is not about a gimmick. Yes, he’s albino, and yes, he’s Muslim, and yes, he is an indisputably talented and powerful MC. He had a commanding presence on the mic, and proved himself adept at hyping the crowd with a verbal dexterity and sense of humor not often witnessed in underground hip-hop. In his Synthesis interview last week, Slug of Atmosphere stated that while he isn’t seeking financial gain from music, he does have friends to whom he’s trying to give a leg up; hopefully he was referring to Brother Ali and BK One, Ali’s DJ, but I question whether the public is ready to be sold on such an unglamorous act.
Atlanta’s Micranots crew, I Self Divine and DJ Kool Akiem, were up next, and proceeded to drop some remarkable material on everybody. For some reason I was anticipating multiple MCs, but I Self Divine held his own, captivating the audience with a aggressive style that was abstract but lucid, over beats that sounded straight out of the early ‘90s: simple but sturdy horn-laced tracks that embellished Divine’s flow. Whether delivering jaw-dropping freestyles that never seemed to end or railing against the corruption of the war on drugs during “Illegal Busyness” (“Check the data, black!”), I was consistently reminded throughout their set what a compelling duo the Micranots really are.
Up last were Atmosphere, who were introduced by a brief DJ set from the masked Mr. Dibbs who spun everything from DJ Shadow to the Chemical Brothers. Ask most underground hip-hop fans when the genre abandoned its thuggish-ruggish aesthetic in favor of soul-searching and self-deprecating lyricism, and they’ll likely say Atmosphere. That’s only fitting of a group led by someone whose moniker stands for “Sean Loves Ugly Girls,” but Slug and his hype man took time to loosen up and deliver a set of cathartic, if somewhat stagy, hip-hop that chopped up their back catalog and spliced together a wholly original sound. The usually drab, sparse beats of Mr. Dibbs and producer Ant sounded positively massive, and it was sometime around when the booming bass kicked in on “Flesh” that I realized that I often like Atmosphere in spite of, and not because of, the excruciatingly personal lyrics that tend to downplay Slug’s considerable skill as an MC. The performer-audience dynamic was established right before a poignant performance of “The Woman With The Tattooed Hands” in which Slug invoked the audience to shout along with him, “We’ve got issues!” This is the face of modern music, folks, so learn to live with it or stay the fuck home.

– Raphael di Donato
– Photo by Ben Kerney

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