Event features hip-hop Atmosphere

Spencer Patterson

Friday, July 2, 2004 | 9:17 a.m.

The last time Sean Daley performed in Las Vegas, the rapper hooked up with his cousin, a Metro police officer.

The experience got Daley better known as Slug, MC of Minneapolis group Atmosphere thinking about the possibilities when hip-hop music and law enforcement come together.

"My cousin is a hip-hop cop," Slug said in a phone interview from his Fifth Element record store and Rhymesayers label headquarters in Minneapolis.

"He was raised on hip-hop. And granted, hip-hop and even punk rock don't always have the best relationships with the police, but we're reaching a point where people who are old enough to be police and mayors have grown up on hip-hop and punk rock."

Then Slug took it one step further.

"I would love to start a whole police department of hip-hop cops and put it in a city and see how effective it would be to have people who were brought up on the teachings of (former Boogie Down Productions MC) KRS-One as the ones who have to deal with 16-year-olds who are out too late at night."

Slug's willingness to verbalize those sorts of progressive ideas has helped earn the 31-year-old a reputation as a rising star on the hip-hop scene.

Atmosphere's fourth album, September's "Seven Travels," has been widely hailed as an underground classic, and Slug's name has begun sprouting up on lists of today's top MCs.

Las Vegans can experience Atmosphere's cerebral brand of hip-hop when this summer's Vans Warped Tour touches down at Las Vegas' Desert Breeze Skate Park on Sunday.

The 10-year-old tour primarily attracts fans of punk rock, a challenge Slug said he welcomed during Atmosphere's first batch of Warped dates last year.

"It brought us back to when we still had to prove ourselves, playing in front of people who had no idea who you are," he said. "Over the last couple of years, most of my touring has been Atmosphere headlining. Whereas on the Warped thing, we really had to turn it up and turn it up loud. It was awesome."

That three-week experience in 2003 led Slug to sign Atmosphere up for the entire 2004 Warped Tour. The group, which also includes DJ Mr. Dibbs and rapper Crescent Moon (and non-touring studio producer Ant), is slated to play the Maurice Stage on Sunday.

Slug insists that if punk fans wander off during Atmosphere's set, he understands.

"I don't want to force myself on anybody," Slug said. "If they're not fans of rap already, I'm just like this ugly, funny-looking dude (to them). And I don't want to disappoint nobody.

"But it's awesome because you might have the opportunity to get some new people to like you. If you're hungry enough, come find me."

In a way, Atmosphere's participation in a punk rock tour makes perfect sense. Slug shares that scene's do-it-yourself aesthetic, as evidenced by a recent decision to reject several major-label offers and remain independent.

"They come every six to eight months, and this time we were incredibly open to listening," Slug said. "Because now there's more at the table for us. We're really trying to put ourselves in a position to have more power as far as distribution.

"So it was all about seeing what creative ideas people could come up with to help solve our distribution problem, not just for Atmosphere, but for our whole Rhymesayers label."

But in the end, Slug didn't hear anything that wowed him.

"Nobody really had any good enough ideas," he said. "They heard what we were saying. They agreed with what we were saying. But why would they want to put themselves out there to do something that's going to help us more than it's going to help them?"

Atmosphere eventually signed a one-time distribution deal with Epitaph Records, another independent label run by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz.

Slug remains firmly in control creatively, however, with a radical concept on keeping Atmosphere from becoming unmanageably large.

"If they'd talked to me when I was 19, they probably could have snagged me," he said. "But now there's no way. I'm at a point where I think Atmosphere might be too big, and I don't need to be Mr. Famous.

"There's a point that's going to come where I'll say, 'This is too big. It's freaking me out.' "