Aging Gracefully with Slug

Sean Michael Daley, aka Slug, isn’t as limber as the young Minneapolis MC who blazed new millennial Atmosphere benchmarks “Trying to Find a Balance” and “Fuck You Lucy.” A family man at 43, his seminal grit and intensity have matured into wit and wisdom. Slug and sonic sensei Ant – a rap duo nearing three decades together – perform Friday at a sold-out Emo’s.

Austin Chronicle: Eight albums, five EPs, and so many singles in – not to mention two years touring Southsiders – how does all that feel?

Slug: It’s weird, I really don’t pay attention to the reception of our albums anymore. I think when we made our first few albums, we were all, “Oh, I hope they like it.” Now it’s more like, “Fuck, they haven’t fired us yet?” In that regard, there’s more artistic freedom, but at the same breadth, the minute the album is out, we stop thinking about it. I don’t know if we’re trying to appease the gods or we’re trying to appease ourselves. We stopped looking at albums as these individual pieces and now they’re just part of a larger mosaic that has become our catalog.

AC: One thing that’s different is you talk a lot about mortality on Southsiders.

S: As I’ve grown older, it’s just became a constant presence in my life. When I was younger, I didn’t think about death. I didn’t care. At 43 and after having another round of kids, I’m at that point where I’m no longer anxious or stressed out about small things like paying my light bill. It opened up my brain for other worries that get filled with things like mortality.

Yet, all of that reinforces to me that caring for things outside of yourself is a privilege that not a lot of people have. A lot of people are stressed out by the day to day. So it’s a privilege to go all George Clooney on the world and worry about what’s happening. With that, you have to find that space where you’re concerned, compassionate, and inspired to say something, to do something. I grew up pretty broke, but now I’m in a position of privilege.

Here’s the thing with rap: It’s a genre that was born out of struggle. The whole culture came from a place of nothing and the idea, then, is to build something out of nothing. Yet when you’re able to get out of that struggle, what are you supposed to rap about? You see it now with a lot of artists going socially conscious. The reason why they may go that direction is because they’re like, “Hey, I made it out the hood.” Those artists were much more insular when they first came out.

So I’m still trying to speak to my struggle but not fake it. What is my struggle? It’s finding that line between privilege, the world around me, and making sure I’m being honest.

AC: Artists like Kanye West have taken that route at times. Southsiders has a song named for him.

S: It was really a song about passion, and to personify how my wife and I connected. But I was like, “Where’s the fun?” I’m trying to hide the fun like an Easter egg inside of every single song. In that song, I used his name to personify that passion. I felt like at the time he personified that passion and he always keeps his name buzzing somehow. Some people say no publicity is bad publicity, and I truly think that he really believes that. So many pop stars nowadays have PR telling them what not to say, but this is a guy who is obviously not surrounded by those people and I appreciate that. He’s not scared.

AC: You’ve mentioned LL Cool J and KRS-One as prime influences, but another big one comes from your hometown: Prince.

S: Yeah! I was probably 8 or 9 when I was introduced to Dirty Mind via my aunt. Here was a dude who kind of looked like a girl, but was obviously a dude and he was singing these songs that adults were apprehensive to play in front of me. It was their reaction to the music that piqued my curiosity and set off my relationship with uncle Prince. It wasn’t until I was older that I knew “Sister” was about incest. When I was younger, I didn’t know that. All I knew was that my parents didn’t really want me to hear it, therefore this shit must be awesome.

He had a run – Dirty Mind, to Controversy, to 1999, to Purple Rain, to Around a World in a Day, to Parade – where my age bracket lived along to his music. There’s nobody else that did that. It was like having a cousin come live with you because he got kicked out of his own place, and he was experimenting with sexuality and drugs right there in front of you, so you didn’t have to. I guess, what I’m saying is it felt more personal.

But it’s circumstantial. Had I been many years older like my dad, I probably wouldn’t’ feel that way. My dad was a bassist in southern Minneapolis and I remember him saying, “How the hell did this guy make it?” When I made him sit down with me to listen to Sign O’ the Times, he said, “Ok, yeah, this guy is pretty good.” I’m lucky to be from Minneapolis.

AC: What about your label Rhymesayers? How does it feel to still have that going after all these years?

S: It’s like having a kid. You don’t realize the kid is growing until you look back and think, “I was so caught up in life that I didn’t realize you went from 2 to 20 so fast.” It’s crazy because when I look at old photos from Rhymesayers back in the day, everyone looks so, so young. I think I can speak on behalf of all of us at Rhymesayers that we stood too close to it, which probably makes us the least qualified to judge what it is and what it means to people.

When I look back too, I’m like, “Man, can I have some of those years back?” But it’s more awesome to see what it helped set in motion, from rapper P.O.S and the Doomtree Movement to up and comers like Prof, Dem Atlas, and Haphduzn. At a time, I felt like Minneapolis would be considered a one-trick pony, but more rappers are coming and I love seeing that happen. I enjoy working with those new artists who are helping shape Minneapolis into what it will be.