»South side is my resting place«, is what Slug is rapping on »Always Coming Back Home To You«, a track from Atmosphere’s LP »Seven´s Travels«. And it’s quite significant that Slug and Ant, his buddy on the mixers, are not only showing the represent-attitude that the title »Southsiders« suggests, but are also reaching back to their tried and tested sound-aesthetics: While the beats are based on live-recorded instrumentals once again, the repetitive, poignant and stringent productions come along as material, classically arranged on the MPC. Thematically, they are also falling back on their usual variety – because in contrast to the predecessor »The Family Sign«, on which Slug conceptually focused on his family history, he is now foregrounding his storyteller-mentality once again. »Southsiders« is about the inner conflicts we’re all struggling with, about the chances that lie within failure, about the need to move one’s ass; it’s about »faith, love and charity«. Ödön von Horváths’ stage play of the same title is subtitled » a little dance of death in five pictures«. »Southsiders«,could be subtitled »an almost conciliatory dance of growing up in fifteen tracks«. Because despite all its hardships: »I live life like I love to breath«. Hence, Slug might be something like the Karl Valentin of rap. His ability to combine melancholy, idiocy and ingenuity in order to wrap them up in classic rhyme-structures has turned him into a storyteller whom we always love to listen to.
Southsiders
