Atmosphere plays Conan, Slug to dive in with Apollonia

Not sure if Ant and Plain Ole Bill were protesting Apple’s purchase of Dr. Dre’s Beats or if Team Coco didn’t want them showing off the Apple logo for copyright or advertising purposes, but the X’s taped over the Macs were one of the more noticeable traits of Atmosphere’s all-around stark but emphatic performance last night on “Conan O’Brien.” The Minneapolis rap stars delivered their semi-controversial single “Kanye West” after a hilarious, Ice Cube-invoking appearance by Kevin Hart.  Here’s the clip of the song below.

In related news, Atmosphere frontman Slug has been newly added to the lineup of Prince & the Revolution drummer Bobby Z’s third annual Benefit 2 Celebrate Life, set for June 28 at First Avenue. We can pretty safely speculate that the gig will fulfill a fantasy Slug has had since he was 12 or 13, since he will get to hang with “Purple Rain” star Apollonia at the show.

Slug’s name could be announced for the show after tickets were quickly gobbled up Thursday to the July 12 Atmosphere gig with Imagine Dragons for the MLB All-Star Game concert at TCF Bank Stadium. The rapper took to Twitter to speak out against the widespread ticket scalping that marred the free ticket distribution, saying, "We will play again soon. Do not support scalpers."