Hiphop Indie Legends Atmosphere drop new album “Jestures” today and share music video “Grateful”

Atmosphere, the iconic hip-hop duo consisting of Slug and Ant, have released their new album Jestures, out today via Rhymesayers Entertainment. Alongside the release, they’ve shared a new video for the album highlight “Grateful,” directed by Marmo Films. The visual finds Slug stepping into the role of a pastor in a Righteous Gemstones-style megachurch, fleecing a congregation desperate for salvation.​“Grateful” captures a sense of personal spiritual elevation and transformation. Striving for greatness while staying grounded in gratitude and making amends for past mistakes.

This evening, the duo will close out the summer with a sold-out headline performance at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO, marking their thirteenth headlining performance at the historic venue.

Atmosphere have released a suite of singles and accompanying videos during their rollout. The video for “Really,” directed by Melby, features Slug performing a series of daredevil stunts, landing somewhere between John Wick, The Rehearsal, and Jackass. Meanwhile, the “Velour” video, shot and edited by ZooDeVille, combines dreamlike melodies with lighthearted lyrics to embody euphoric love in an everyday setting.

“Yearning” and “Daley” both arrived with videos directed by Evidence, showcasing Slug amid the urban backdrops of Minneapolis, MN, and Venice Beach, CA, respectively.  While “Daley” leans into more crackling, soulful dimensions of the producer Ant’s sound, “Yearning” finds Slug sharing themes of social experiences and personal identity, grappling with the addictive lure of external validation and the human condition.

The cliches about creativity say that it comes from chaos—the rock star archetypes forged in the 1970s conjure images of coke spoons and trashed hotel rooms, and more recent thinking makes it inextricable from major trauma. Jestures, which is already Atmosphere’s fifth release of the 2020s, challenges that notion. This remarkably productive period has seen Slug burrow into every crevice of middle-aged stability and domestic life for its unexpected points of friction. With Jestures, this exploration has yielded its most fascinating results to date. The songs arrive in the order they were completed, from top down alphabetically, providing a fascinating look into the duo’s artistic process as the album coalesced into a final product.

A little less than a quarter of the way through Jestures, Atmosphere’s sprawling, acrobatic new album, Slug cuts right to the beating heart of this phase in the legendary duo’s catalog: “Still get nightmares when you’re living your dreams,” he raps.

The first thing you notice about Jestures is its shape. Not only does it feature an eye-popping 26 songs, but those songs are arranged alphabetically by their titles: “Asshole” into “Baby” into “Caddy,” and so on. Even the lineup of guests conforms to this, with Evidence on “Effortless,” Kurious on “Kilowatts,” and a trio of heavy hitters—Musab, Muja Messiah, and Mike the Martyr—on “Mash,” among others. Both the sequencing of tracks and their sheer number are bits of misdirection. Many songs on Jestures last just long enough to fully articulate their core ideas; the crop of 26 is arranged in such a way so as to be musically intuitive and a comprehensive survey of one man’s life as he pauses to take stock.

Jestures is an album not about being stuck, but about the relentless forward progress of time. “Don’t mistake my circle as the shape of repetition,” Slug raps on opener “Asshole,” underlining how central this pursuit has become. This manifests in the mundane—those rent or mortgage payments come no matter what’s happened in the 30 days since; the fridge needs to stay full—and when it comes to life’s bigger, more abstract anxieties. If, as he raps on “Daley,” Slug wants “to skip ahead to read the end of the story,” he’s out of luck.

What exists in place of that certainty that will never come is the joy of discovery. Little things you never noticed about your partner, tics your kids pick up when you aren’t looking. All of this is laid over a lush, varied set of beats from the illustrious Ant, ranging from the controlled electro-chaos of “Furthermore” to the heavy droning of “Past,” the playful drum cascade of “XXX” to the cowboy-outlaw twang of “Locusts.” Early on the title track, Slug quips that while he has both an angel and a devil on his shoulders, “all they really want is exposure.” It’s funny, but it’s also the core ethos of Jestures. On a long enough timeline, all the overdue credit card bills or lovers’ quarrels simply become the things that shape you in the present—and point you, better prepared, toward the future.

Atmosphere recently completed the Dank Daze of Summer tour alongside Cypress Hill, Lupe Fiasco, and The Pharcyde, and concluded the tour with a milestone moment: a special hometown headline show at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand.

Jestures is out now – https://rse.lnk.to/Jestures

Jestures is also in stores now and available on vinyl, CD, and cassette, shipping directly from atmospheresucks.com.
Additionally, merchandise such as hoodies, t-shirts, keychains, posters, and stickers are available.

Jestures Tracklist:
1. Asshole
2. Baby
3. Caddy
4. Daley
5. Effortless (feat. Evidence)
6. Furthermore
7. Grateful
8. Heavy Lifting (feat. Haphduzn)
9. Instrument
10. Jester
11. Kilowatts (feat. Kurious)
12. Locusts
13. Mash (feat. Mike the Martyr, Musab, Muja Messiah)
14. Neptune
15. Ophidiophobia
16. Past
17. Quicksand
18. Really
19. Sean
20. Trying
21. Used To
22. Velour
23. Westbound
24. XXX
25. Yearning (feat. Yoni Wolf (of WHY?))
26. Zorro (feat. ZooDeVille)

Connect with Atmosphere
Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | TikTok | YouTube |​ Bandsintown

Email