Atmosphere Shares Colorado Love Before Annual Red Rocks Concert

Of all the hip-hop artists who have packed Red Rocks over the years, including such legends as Snoop Dogg and Nas, no one has sold out more shows than Minneapolis duo Atmosphere. For real. Since their first show at the venue in 2011, rapper Sean “Slug” Daley and DJ-producer Anthony “Ant” Davis have had a streak of nine straight sell-outs.

Daley, the loquacious frontman with a self-deprecating sense of humor, is just as shocked as anyone. He remembers the group’s first performance and impressions when Atmosphere played on a side stage during the 2008 Monolith Festival at Red Rocks.

“Just immediately, we were like, ‘What is this place?’ I had heard of Red Rocks, but just had never been there,” he explains. “My experience with it was the U2 movie [1984’s U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky]. When we got there, though, it was bigger than expected.”

A few years later, Daley and Davis were headlining, and the rest is history. But Daley still can’t believe they keep getting invited to headline.

“I just remember being like, ‘Wow, this is insane that they’re letting an underground rap group play at this place.’ Then when they asked us to come back, I was like, ‘Okay, I guess,’” he adds. “We just didn’t really see that being a reality for us.

“Now it’s kind of become this joke in between the band about how they keep letting us come back, but we’re still excited and surprised every time we get to show up and play there,” he continues. “It’s pretty cool, but the internal joke is like, ‘They’re going to let us do it again.’”
Daley and Davis plan to add to the sell-out total when Atmosphere takes the stage for the twelfth time as a headliner on Friday, August 16. No joke. Method Man & Redman, Deltron 3030, NOFUN! and Skratch Bastid are also on the bill.

Atmosphere is busy promoting the 2023 LP-EP combo of So Many Other Realities Exist Simultaneously and Talk Talk. Then in May, the 2007 mixtape Strictly Leakage, which became a highly sought-after rap relic after the initial run quickly sold out, received a reissue.

To date, Atmosphere has released thirteen albums since 1996, including the 2002 breakout sophomore record, God Loves Ugly, while Daley and Davis have been part of numerous collaborations with other artists along the way, too.

Daley, who comes up with the lyrics and stories after listening to Davis’s beats, believes Atmosphere can never have enough material, or at least song ideas, which is why the duo stockpiled so much over the years. More than they can probably ever put to use and release, he says.

“My heart says, ‘I need more. I need more.’ It’s the same with making music. Me and Anthony have more music in a vault than we’ve released, and we’ve released a lot of music, but we make so much music because it’s just what we do,” Daley shares. “Not all of it is for commerce. Not all of it is for sale. Not all of it is for another person to listen to.”

It’s just what they do.

“Even before I was a professional musician, rapper, whatever you want to call it, even before anyone gave a shit about who I was, I had lots of songs because I made songs, even though I was a truck driver. I made songs because it’s what I like to do,” he continues.

Atmosphere made a name for itself in Colorado during those early days, when Daley and Davis wouldn’t think twice about jumping in a van and stringing a run together. They found their way out west in 2000 with shows in Denver and Boulder.

Daley recalls being taken aback by the reception from the hometown crowds. Everybody seemed to know of them and all the songs when it felt like no one outside of Minneapolis did.

“The very first time we showed up there in Colorado, we knew there was something going on. The numbers were so large, and we had no idea how that was a possibility,” Daley says. “It was the internet. I can’t take any of the credit for that, because I didn’t know how to use the internet at the time. We weren’t going to complain. We just take it and roll.”

Little did they know it’d be the start of a career-long love affair. Now, Colorado boasts Atmosphere’s largest listening audience on Spotify, with over 35,000 monthly listeners.

Daley is known to include some “rants and tangents,” as he calls them, during a show, depending on what’s going on in the world or how he’s feeling before that particular concert. But his honesty and transparency are part of what endears Atmosphere to fans.

“The fact that these people will let me do this is a beautiful thing to me,” he says. “It fills my cup, the fact that I’m allowed to speak freely about how I feel about the things around us, and possibly even be heard through a lens of someone maybe saying, ‘Hey, he has a point.’”

You really don’t know what you’re going to get during an Atmosphere set, but that’s part of the intrigue.

“It can go any direction,” he concludes.

Atmosphere, with Method Man & Redman, Deltron 3030, NOFUN! and Skratch Bastid, 6:30 p.m. Friday, August 16, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, 18300 West Alameda Parkway. Tickets are $68-$750.