Atmosphere has been steadily releasing music for more than two decades, and they’ve shown no sign of stopping. Instead, the duo of Slug and Ant joined in the ranks of JAY-Z, Phonte, and Open Mike Eagle by crafting a brand of Rap that chronicles aging, family, health, and still feeling connected to Hip-Hop culture amidst it all.

Atmosphere’s just-released seventh studio album, Mi Vida Local, showcases MC Slug and producer Ant as two grown-up artists facing outer-worldly stressors, and the love they find through home. Following their 2016 LP Fishing Blues, the new album is focused on the Southside of Minneapolis, where the duo primarily work via their “beautiful basements.”

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The Rhymesayers release deals with the struggles of living in 2018, and self-imposed anxieties of the pursuit of happiness. As grim as some lines on Mi Vida Local may feel, Slug always brings it back to the central theme: Happiness. On “Mijo,” Slug delivers a joyous hook for his children. “I don’t know how much time we have left / But I promise you that when I breathe my last breath / I’ma exhale and remember your birth / It’s never too late to get some heaven on earth.” On “Specificity,” Slug sweetly pens an ode to his wife: “Your paintbrush might have made the stars in space / But they ain’t got nothing on my partner’s face / I had to read it, study it, learn what I was up against / Burn the older testaments of what we used to struggle with.” Meanwhile, on “Delicate,” the rapper celebrates life and simultaneously rejects its cynicism: “Y’all got me feeling hesitation, embarrassment / I might be the last generation of grandparents / I know that I’ve been fortunate for all the opportunities / Disproportionately disappointed in the human beings / I get it, we’re specks of dust / At the bus stop busking for extra crust / Like f*ck it, you can sacrifice me to the weather / If you promise that you’ll let my songs live forever.”

The album embraces fatherhood, finds the joys of married intimacy in the Target parking lot, and still comes to grips that a B-boy’s bravado with peers never really goes away. The group that made a location-based anthem 15 years ago with “Always Coming Back Home To You” has evolved, but never strayed from neither its Twin Cities nor its Hip-Hop roots.

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Also of note, super-group The Dynospectrum, of which Slug and Ant are members, reunite on “Randy Mosh.” This RSE outfit includes I Self Divine (Micranots/Semi.Official), RSE co-founder Sab The Artist (fka Musab), and Swift.

Atmosphere (holding a current alias of “DADMOSPHERE”) took to Twitter and unveiled a full album stream of Mi Vida Local, set to “visuals of some of our favorite people, places, and things.” Shot and edited by Tomas Aksamit, the stream showcases some of the duo’s favorite spots in the city they call home.

1. Jerome
2. Stopwatch
3. Virgo
4. Delicate
5. Drown (ft. Cashinova, The Lioness & deM atlaS)
6. Anymore
7. Earring (ft. Musab)
8. Trim
9. Specificity
10. Mijo
11. Randy Mosh (ft. The Dynospectrum)
12. Graffiti

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Press photo by Dan Monick provided by Rhymesayers Entertainment.