Atmosphere, Blueprint, Grieves and Budo, DJ Abilities, and Sab The Artist
Thursday, April 28 at The National
Ideally, every show review would occur under optimum conditions. You’d show up at the venue feeling open-minded, well-fed, and well-rested, ready to be blown away. Unfortunately, things aren’t always like that. They definitely weren’t like that for me a few weeks ago, on the last Thursday in April. If you’d told me a year or two before that night that I’d be thinking about bailing on an Atmosphere show, I’d think you were crazy. Why would I miss the chance to see one of my favorite hip-hop groups of all time? And yet, as the sun set that evening, nothing was going well for me. My day job had been tiring and frustrating, my photographer for the show had cancelled, I still hadn’t heard back from my contact with Atmosphere’s publicity department about whether I was confirmed for a press pass, and when I contemplated the fact that I might not get to go after all, I was feeling kind of relieved. It was almost a bummer when the confirmation email showed up an hour before showtime. Instead of going home, taking a nap, and trying to catch up on email, I had a job to do. And with or without a photographer, or for that matter, an ideal frame of mind, I was heading for the National to do it. Even if the prospect didn’t seem that appetizing to me at the time.
Atmosphere, Blueprint, Grieves and Budo, DJ Abilities, and Sab The Artist
Thursday, April 28 at The National
Ideally, every show review would occur under optimum conditions. You’d show up at the venue feeling open-minded, well-fed, and well-rested, ready to be blown away. Unfortunately, things aren’t always like that. They definitely weren’t like that for me a few weeks ago, on the last Thursday in April. If you’d told me a year or two before that night that I’d be thinking about bailing on an Atmosphere show, I’d think you were crazy. Why would I miss the chance to see one of my favorite hip-hop groups of all time? And yet, as the sun set that evening, nothing was going well for me. My day job had been tiring and frustrating, my photographer for the show had cancelled, I still hadn’t heard back from my contact with Atmosphere’s publicity department about whether I was confirmed for a press pass, and when I contemplated the fact that I might not get to go after all, I was feeling kind of relieved. It was almost a bummer when the confirmation email showed up an hour before showtime. Instead of going home, taking a nap, and trying to catch up on email, I had a job to do. And with or without a photographer, or for that matter, an ideal frame of mind, I was heading for the National to do it. Even if the prospect didn’t seem that appetizing to me at the time.
I had to stop and get some food before heading to the venue, or I knew I was gonna crash out before the show was over. Unfortunately, my trip to Taco Bell made me late, and I missed Sab The Artist. Not completely–I saw the last 30 seconds or so of his set–but it wasn’t enough to allow me to form an impression. I always seem to miss the opening acts at the National, even when I’m totally stoked to be there, so as usual, this is on me. Growing up in the Richmond scene led me to expect every show to start at least an hour late; the relatively recent arrival of a venue professional enough to start an 8 PM show at 8 PM is something I’m still getting used to. I’ll do better next time, folks, I promise.
Only a minute or so after I arrived, DJ Abilities came out for the first of his two brief DJ sets of the evening. Abilities did a great job of keeping the music flowing between opening acts, and his unpredictable sets were far better than any random CD pumped through the PA could have been. They were also far louder. In fact, I think Abilities was the loudest performer of the evening, if you can imagine that. When the bass on the records he played kicked in, I could feel my eardrums shuddering. This was when I made the belated realization that my lackadaisical preparation for the show had allowed me to arrive without earplugs. Huge mistake. Listening to Abilities switch up effortlessly between Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Tears For Fears was awesome, but I’m sure it brought me significantly closer to total hearing loss.
One thing I really appreciate about Atmosphere and their Rhymesayers Entertainment cohorts is the fact that everyone involved with the label sees hip-hop as an intrinsically musical art form. Some hip-hop acts can make you feel like they exist in a world where no non-hip-hop music exists; they rely on electronic noises and staccato pops and pings, allowing no melody to taint their monochromatic songs. This can be a cool effect at times (cf. Clipse), but mostly it just gets boring and irritating. No one from the Rhymesayers family is afraid to bring to their music the melodic feel that so much modern hip-hop lacks, though. This was proven by the fact that all of the groups that performed at this show had at least one live instrument involved in their act. Grieves and Budo set up their equipment as DJ Abilities finished up his first set, and began their performance with a song that featured Budo playing trumpet and keyboard behind Grieves’s excellent rhymes. The beats were generated by a laptop, but Budo filled in quite a bit of melodic texture, mainly on keyboard but occasionally on guitar as well. Between the instrumental backdrops he created and Grieves’s erudite, emotionally-centered delivery, I found myself thinking of the early Atmosphere albums that first got me into that group. Far from seeming unoriginal, Grieves and Budo put their own stamp on a style of hip-hop that might seem played out to some but has always been preferable to me over the tough-guy shtick that dominates the genre most of the time.
After another set by DJ Abilities, Blueprint took the stage, backed by a DJ and a bass player. He himself added some keyboards to some of the songs, even performing the last few songs of his set with a keytar strapped around his neck–a decision much appreciated by the audience. However, for the most part, he just rapped, leaving the DJ and bass player to create the musical backing for his songs. At this point in the show, even after two different sets by DJ Abilities had both rattled my brain inside of my skull quite thoroughly, I was still in a bit of a hazy, downcast mental state. Unlike Grieves and Budo, whose music had tickled my fancy enough to penetrate the fog around my brain, Blueprint mostly just left me zoning out. I kept telling myself that I’d have time later in the set to form a better impression of Blueprint’s performance, but as the time ticked down to his last few songs, I still couldn’t quite figure out what I thought. I guess that’s sort of a review in and of itself–I dug Grieves and Budo, and I dug DJ Abilities too, even despite my less than ideal frame of mind. Blueprint, though, failed to make much of any impression on me. After he and his backing musicians left the stage, the first and only true halt in the evening’s performances occurred. The stagehands needed to clear away the equipment used by the opening bands in order to make room for the newly expanded four-piece lineup of Atmosphere, and as equipment was moved into place, I found myself checking my phone for the time over and over again. I was ready for the evening to be over.
Of course, it was at that moment when everything finally fell into place for me. Atmosphere–MC Slug, DJ Ant, guitarist Nate Collis and keyboardist Erick Anderson–hit the stage, and immediately pulled me into their world. With a painted backdrop that evoked the dark, foreboding forest landscape of the song “Became,” from their latest album, The Family Sign, they opened with that album’s opening track, “My Key.” When reviewing that album, I found myself a little uncertain about their new, less conventionally hip-hop direction, driven as it was by the newly prominent guitar and keyboard sounds. However, in the live setting, there could be no doubt about the effectiveness of their new instrumental configuration. Even as I greatly enjoyed the first song, though, I worried a little bit about whether they’d just avoid the older material created back when the group merely consisted of Slug and Ant. They’d anticipated my fears, though, and they soon transitioned from new material into classic Atmosphere tracks like “Modern Man Hustle,” “Guns And Cigarettes,” and “It Goes.” One older song that highlighted just how much the new lineup could add even on older material was the title track to Atmosphere’s 2002 album God Loves Ugly, a major crowd-pleaser on which the piano sample that drove the original version was performed live by Anderson. The set tended to mix tracks from early Atmosphere albums such as Lucy Ford and God Loves Ugly with songs from their new album and recent EPs. However, strangely enough, their mid-period work was mostly neglected. They didn’t play anything from 2005’s You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having, and 2003’s Seven’s Travels was only represented by one song, “Trying To Find A Balance.” As these are my two favorite Atmosphere albums, it was kind of frustrating to hear so little from them, but even the songs in the set that I’d never heard before were pretty awesome in the live setting. The set was further enhanced by Slug’s excellent between-song banter, which he often used to create humorous narrative transitions between the song that had just been played and the song that was about to start. At one point, he linked half a dozen songs from several different phases in Atmosphere’s career together into an extended narrative about his girlfriend breaking up with him to move overseas, and what ensued when she returned several years later. This process, and really the entire set, was so entertaining that when the group finally left the stage after a 90-minute performance, I cheered for an encore just as loudly as the rest of the crowd did. And even after an outstanding five-song encore, I still left the venue wanting more. As the ending to a show that I had initially dreaded, this was a rather ironic feeling, but regardless, I’m certainly glad that I made it out. In my mind, at least, Atmosphere transformed the evening from a job into a party, and I can’t thank them enough for that. Next time they come through town, I’ll go see them again–no matter what mood I’m in.
[Note: Sorry for the publicity photos, folks–no photographer! -ed.]
