Pitchfork

"Shoulda Known" is the first single from Atmosphere's upcoming LP, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold. At the start, it sounds like the Minneapolis hip-hop duo of Slug and Ant are gonna tell us stuff we don't wanna know, like Lil' Wayne's "Easter pink"-Sprite oversharing except involving, ohh, naked dude-ass on bathtub porcelain. But then it becomes clear: "Shoulda Known" is a drug song, and even for a moment a booze song, only it's about, like, details and emotions and stuff, not hyper-intertextual allusion-weaving or raspy humor. (Those two things are awesome, I know.) Backed by a boom-bap beat and laser-guided synth bass, plus some solitary keyboard plinks, Atmosphere's storytelling moves nicely from the bath water dripping "like a painkiller" to the "goth nail polish" to the "pupils like marbles hide behind eyelids." It ends up as another stark rap tale comparing drugs to physical lust, although unlike in, say, Jay-Z's "I Know", this time the drugs are the ones with the appetite, and the perspective isn't that of the dealer.

MP3:> Atmosphere: "Shoulda Known"
[from When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold; due 04/22/08 on Rhymesayers Entertainment]