Interview: Hmong emcee Tou Saiko

By |

Can you tell me how you came to the Twin Cities?I was born in the Nongkai Refugee Camp in Thailand in 1979. My parents were there because of the Vietnam War; they were forced out of their village. That was the same year that they moved away to Syracuse, and that’s where I grew up. I came to the Twin Cities when I was, like, 12. When my parents came here, it was just my parents and me—and then all the rest of my siblings were born here. Continue Reading

Atmosphere: The golden age

By |

It’s probably a coincidence that Rhino released expanded and remastered versions of the first four Replacements albums on the same day that Rhymesayers Entertainment dropped Atmosphere’s latest full-length album, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold. The album debuted at #5 on the Billboard chart, making it the highest-charting release in the history of Rhymesayers, a Minneapolis hip-hop label home to artists including Brother Ali, I Self Divine, and Eyedea & Abilities. For more information on Atmosphere, see the Rhymesayers Entertainment Web site or Atmosphere’s MySpace page. While Atmosphere might not yet have attained the same hallowed status as the Replacements in the echelons of Twin Cities music, the hip-hop duo’s inclusion in the “MN150” exhibit at the Historical Society (something even Westerberg and pals can’t claim), as well as their sold-out shows across the country and the one-thousand-plus people who attended the four-hour midnight release party at Fifth Element the night before they went on tour suggest that they’re on their way. Also in the Daily Planet, read Justin Schell’s interview with Slug.The last ten months have been some of Atmosphere’s most prolific. Continue Reading

Interview: Atmosphere’s Sean Daley (a.k.a. Slug)

By |

Throughout your career, you’ve transformed local references to make them resonate far beyond Lyndale Avenue. Could you say more about that?I don’t know that I ever knew that I was doing that. I think I was doing what we do, and that’s just taking what we have around us and using it to help paint a picture. It was really easy to work all those kinds of references into my stories, because most of my stories involved alcohol. I wanted to tell these stories in a way that people from my neighborhood could visualize them or understand them. Continue Reading

Looking back to move foward

By |

In the video for Brother Ali’s “Take Me Home,” a suited Ali and his DJ, BK-One, walk past brilliantly multi-colored graffiti. John Grider’s Billygoat peers out from behind them while hues of kids skateboard, skip rope, and play basketball. This brief clip takes place in front of the old Riverside Market, soon to be replaced by the new Seward Co-op. The momentary harmony of the scene in Ali’s video—where business suits, neighborhood children and parents, and graffiti all co-exist peacefully—actually masks one of the more fraught chapters in the history of Twin Cities’ public art, as well as the history of Twin Cities graffiti, both in its quality and its consequences. We can locate the Riverside Market within many different historical streams of Twin Cities graffiti. Continue Reading