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From the moment I first heard the news that Atmosphere would be returning to these shores to make two, all too rare appearances in the UK alongside Jehst, I was like an unstoppable force of blinkered impatience. Well the day finally came and I was less than a mile from the show when this particular unstoppable force met the proverbial immovable object. Without prior warning nor subsequent explanation, Ladycook and I were trapped on a bus when its driver had decided to stop (with the doors locked) for about twenty minutes. Upon making our late arrival at the Brick Lane pub, we were further delayed by some confusion regarding the guestlist and by the time somebody from El-Plate was available to OK us, it was about 9.25 and we'd missed much of the opening set by Jehst and his YNR entourage of emcees and deejays. From the fifteen minutes I did catch, it was a competent performance of tracks but nothing new or different to how it sounds on record. So, as tight as his recital of tracks including Under the weather may have been, there was little to distinguish this cool performance from the CD I'd had in my discman on the train to London that afternoon. I wish I'd caught more to be able to comment further…. I have since heard praise of the deejay that night but I'm not sure what they mean - do they mean the interval between the support and main act where somebody played (NB: there was no mixing) a series of admittedly rowdy party anthems including Pharoahe Monch's Simon Says and Black Star's Definition. If that's what folk have been talking about then pfffff, all I can say is some heads are easily pleased. Nevertheless, this school disco style deejay set/interlude went down extremely well with the stereotypical crowd of homogenous lanky whiteboy UK-hiphop heads who lapped it up and crammed ever tighter together to get prime position in this feeding frenzy.
During the brief calm between one song and the next, some guy at the back of the room started yelling his demand for "Flesh!….Do flesh!" To which Slug, playing to the gallery, beseeched "do you see Iself here? Do you think I can teleport Iself over here for one track? Blueprint, did you pack the teleporter?" Still, always keen to please their (male dominated) audience, the ominous words "first rule is, if somebody falls over, pick them up. Second rule is, if you don't want to be in it, get the fuck out!" Was all the warning given to launch an impromptu wrecking-ball rock-out. Apart from the one wanker who insisted on wearing the backpack (which no doubt contained a tweenies lunchbox prepared by his mummy in case the angry rap men kept him out late) this audience (which had previously lived up to all the stereotypes of "underground" heads) rose with gusto to the occasion, revelling in the ensuing chaos of a mosh sesh to the sound of Black Sabbath's War Pigs.
The lights came up and that was it - wow! But hang on! 11pm? 11pm!? There must be some confusion no? Alas no. It came as a shock to this country boy to discover that one of the year's most important underground hiphop gigs was over before the start of The Sopranos.
© CD Goldie/ukhh.com 1999 - 2003
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Atmosphere, Blueprint, Mr Dibbs & Jehst 93 Feet East, London 
The promotion for this night was a bit misleading because, having listed all the US artists separately, it turned out that the main act was a collaborative performance between DJ Dibbs, emcee/producer Blueprint and Atmosphere's frontman Slug. Still, it's great when the acts are there to perform good music and not to simply plug the latest record - and for this show at least, three truly proved a magic number. Together, these three kings of underground hiphop pooled their staggering talents to deliver an hour-long helping of deluxe rap that'll prove hard to top by anything but another Atmosphere show. In marked contrast with Jehst's temperate headnod-inducing walkman hiphop, one of the trio's earliest tracks Party for the Fight to Write and its lyrics "let's put a face on this common cause!" ignited a fist-pumping, jumping mood that carried through to the end of the evening. As expected, the Slug exercised utter mastery of his audience from jump and not that he ever needed any helping winning over the audience - but if you're going to get a hype-man, then one of the best emcee/producers in the US is a good place to start. Blueprint's ebullience was the perfect foil for Slug's wistful musing. With introductions out the way, these lyrical sparring partners proceeded to perform a sound-clash medley where by they would each take it in turns to do a chunk of one of their records which would then be mixed into the other emcee's turn. It is here where Blueprint's star appeal shined brightest wielding his large and loud melodramatic flow over his often theatrical production to perform verses from his own joints and Soul Position work such as Unlimited and Mic Control. Midway into this back-and-forth medley, Dibbs assumed a more prominent role in proceedings, flipping the script so that the duo could set renditions of some Atmosphere classics including Scapegoat to a series of well known beats like Ice-T's High Rollers and The Beatnuts' Off the books. At the end of this medley, Dibbs was silenced and Blueprint let rip with some human beatbox action so Slug could do a counterpart to The scapegoat this time talking about what he loves. Mr Dibbs's failure to cue up the next record during this acapella performance incurred the pantomime wrath of the emcees and the role of the night's whipping boy. As soon as the 1200 Hobo deejay found the right track and the instrumental for Dr Dre's Aint Nothing but a G Thang kicked in, the duo launched an inevitable diss against their man which commenced with the line "I want to kick my deejay in his hymen!" In hindsight this could have been scripted but it certainly didn't feel that way on the night.
Out of all the Atmosphere tracks that night, Modern Man's Hustle elicited the largest, loudest, but not the most interesting response. The trio's medley featured the aggressive The Bass And The Movement and the behaviour of certain members of the crowd later on that night suggests that they had taken Slug's snide invitation to "go ahead and download my dick to a file" seriously. It's always odd to see people worshipping other human beings like they are the second-coming -and that night, it was still further unsettling (and then some) to be stuck amid so many grown men riving and rocking back and forth with their hands in the air or wrapped behind their heads when Slug did woman with the tattooed hands like he was making love to each and every one of them. Well these blokes sorta got what they were asking for when, at irregular intervals, the front row of the packed audience got splashed with what I hope was not body fluids. Slug appeared genuinely surprised to see how, in London, females constituted a far smaller portion of the audience than they would at his US shows and so made light of this gender imbalance by faning astonishment that there were actually girls daring to attend his show and by making the suggestion that perhaps all eyes should be on the ladies; not Blueprint or himself. Obviously his words went unheeded and this issue would form a rich source of banter for the rest of the performance. For instance, in the middle of that passage during 
With all their most well known tracks now out the way and the most lively moment of the night leaving us all staggering around on a crunchy carpet of glass and plastic, the post-mosh bewilderment was accompanied by the emcees singing along to the hook from Soul Position's gentle Take Your Time out to a sea of peace-signs. Everybody slowly regained their composure and the act addressed themselves to the job of concluding their performance. Neither Slug or Blueprint are known for their political consciousness but we got a taste (literally as it turns out) of their world view with their closing speech. As the conclusion to a short discourse about how other rappers' tours are sponsored by multi-national sneaker companies who bribe acts with freebie sweatshop product, The pair confided that the only thing on there rider was bananas which they would love to share with their fans. Serving as a little reward to the uber-devotees that'd been down since day one, The night's final cut was God's Bathroom Floor This track is the closest Atmosphere ever got to the work Slug did as one quarter of Anticon's Deep Puddle Dynamics and in the absence from the playlist of similarly weird tracks like Aspiring Sociopath, it wouldn't have been my first choice for a finale.
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