The scene is all too familiar for Sean Daley: He’s out at a bar in his native Minneapolis, and someone who looks vaguely familiar approaches him and says, “Yo, man, I can’t believe you dropped me in that song like that.”
Daley — better known to hip-hop heads as Slug, the lead MC and songwriter behind the conscious outfit Atmosphere — is always baffled at the hubris of his “buddies.”
“These people would say this and that without knowing that the song had nothing to do with them,” Daley said in advance of his two shows at the Ogden Theatre on Saturday and Sunday. “It’s like, ‘Which song are you talking about? Oh, get out of here. It’s not about you.’ That’s just my poor writing skills. I keep the songs shallow and ambiguous enough that 20 people might think they were about them.
“But none of these songs are about anybody but me. There is no Lucy. The few people who actually could say that they inspired something I wrote in these songs, they don’t even know. They never will. They don’t listen to me.”
Daley is one of the most stimulating voices in hip-hop. His unsettlingly frank observations and impassioned delivery have made him a star in a genre that is still mostly underground. Whereas most of Daley’s peers are playing rock clubs or maybe small theaters, he’s headlining two nights at the Ogden, which is three times the size of the Bluebird Theater.
But now Daley is trying something new. Instead of writing openly about his pockmarked past, he’s focusing more on fiction writing on his latest record, “When Life Gives You Lemons.”
“I guess I’ve written fiction before, but this time it’s more obvious that these are narratives,” Daley said. “After the first week, I didn’t have to consciously remind myself what I was doing. I got into the zone of not writing about myself.”
Once he was in that zone, something else happened. Within the construct of fictional lyrics, Daley wanted more out of his own writing. He heard other rappers around him wrapping their rhymes up in resolution — and not just presenting an empty conflict — as a tip of their hat to the conscious era of rap.
“In mainstream rap today, especially the post-gangsta rap, the thing that’s missing is the resolution,” Daley said. “Now I’m hearing Common and even Kanye throw resolution into their music, and I even hopped on that. When I looked back on my older material, I wasn’t offering resolution — I was just complaining and leaving it to the listener to know what’s up next.
“But music should be teaching you or helping you escape or giving you something you don’t already have. If anything, I was inspired by the few guys I heard slipping resolution into their stuff. And then I started making sure that (my) whole album had resolution. But don’t get me wrong. I’m still self-absorbed, still selfish, still sounding like I’m in eighth-grade creative writing class.”
Daley’s writing exercise led to another unexpected challenge for the MC: a children’s book, which is being distributed with the limited edition version of “When Life Gives You Lemons.” Daley calls the book “a simplified version of the record,” and he started it as a reaction to his contemporaries who accused him of dumbing down his records after the success of “Seven’s Travels,” which broke him to a larger audience.
“I’m not dumbing my music down,” he said. “I’m just trying to be more forward and direct. I’m not a poet. I’m a rapper, and rappers are communicators.”
Daley is concerned about the expectations of his first foray into children’s literature.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever tried to write a children’s book,” he said. “Look at my first album. It’s not great. Still, I’m glad I did it.”
Daley hopes that a kid reading his book and an adult listening to his record will get the same message: “Take your situation, and instead of drowning yourself, use it to your advantage and find the optimistic side.”
“It is a concept album, and the concept is me,” he said. “You may not want to hear that, because it seems so selfish, but it’s the truth. I’m trying to shed the cynicism and the negativity I’ve been carrying for years.”
Things are looking up for Daley, who has been touring with his longtime producer, Ant, since 2005. Did this record — this exercise in fictional writing — give him a much-needed psychological respite from the draining decade that has seen him open his soul to fans across the planet?
“On one hand, yes, because I don’t wince at anything while listening to this record,” he said. “But on the other hand, it’s still me getting my thoughts and theories out of my mind and mouth. It’s still me rocking the narratives, even if I’m not the character.”
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com
Atmosphere
Conscious hip-hop. Ogden Theater, 935 E. Colfax Ave. Saturday and Sunday with Abstract Rude and DJ Rare Groove. 9 p.m. both shows sold out.
