Pitchfork

You can't imagine how much fun I wasn't having listening to this album. Atmosphere's MC, Slug, he of the tortured romantic life, intriguing racial politics (half-white, half-black), and "aw-shucks, he's rapping, wait, stop shouting" rhyme style, is getting boring fast. Let us count the ways: Reverential past-peddling. Degenerative flow. Lame Mohawk. Weak follow-up to the breakthrough album. All the ducks, lined up in a row.

At the risk of sounding like one of those kids who watches "The O.C.", Atmosphere was always for those moments when a woman ripped your heart out, then punched you in the neck. I won't say "the hip-hop Death Cab," but you get the picture. Nothing wrong with the raw sadness and fury Slug conjured, but you weren't exactly throwin' your sets up for Minneapolis' finest. I always put that Lucy Ford record underneath the M.O.P. album in the crate. So the abandonment of that form here, that "guilty pleasure," hurts my feelings. Mr. Heartache, where you at? In its place, I guess, is the sap of another tree: Nostalgia.

Nothing can illuminate the pomp and circumstance of You Can't Imagine better than this couplet from "Watch Out": "When I was younger, I wanted to be LL Cool J/ But then he started makin' records for the girls and shit/ So I ripped up the Kangol and threw it away." Uh, what? Forgetting that's just a wack rhyme for a moment, anyone who's been to an Atmosphere concert surely knows the kind of estrogen jam they can be. Even worse than the desertion, though, is that this record lacks any growth or good humor. Which is a shame because their previous album, Seven's Travels, while flawed, started to find a balance (wink) between the political leanings that have crept into Slug's raps with his wounded-puppy raps.

This is not to say the album's a mess. Like Blackalicious' recent The Craft, it displays a real hard-earned competency, something a decade of recording together will get you. But the lyrics lack transcendence or resonance. Conversely, producer Ant's production is full and springy. His growth has never been in question, exploding with complicated chops and orchestrations on every album. Whether flipping operettas on "Say Hey There" or dropping pianos from five floors up on "Musical Chairs" he's got sundry abilities. The songs here are melded beautifully, making the eventual instrumental wax a must-cop. In all honesty, I never understood why Ant wasn't lacing dudes like Freeway and Young Buck years ago. He could do it.

There are exceptions as the album moves, like "Angelface" which quivers with panging guitars and (gasp) a politically snarky jab at Uncle Sam, masked as the kind of love letter this dude used to kill something lovely five years ago. "Pour Me Another" oozes barfly grease. And "Little Man" is pretty and loopy. On it Slug says "I'm over 30, can't maintain relations/ All these women wanna hurt me/ And I just don't have the patience." This is not something you hear much on a rap record. It's refreshing. Of course, if you want to be a dick about it, Juelz Santana murdered the same sample used on "Little Man" on the first Diplomats album back in 2003 without sacrificing his diary entry. Pity.

On their fifth proper, the attempts to merge Slug's emotionally aware, sneering theatrics with the sort of nostalgia-4-cheap malarkey that passes for "conscious" hip-hop these days is a crashing failure. Like Edan and Little Brother's reminiscent melancholy from this year, listening to Slug disregard hip-hop's sonic development is like stuffing a chloroform-soaked Shelltoe in your mouth. Don't you know we rockin' Bapes these days, mang?