Drawing the biggest crowd ever for a homegrown hip-hop act at the Minnesota State Fair grandstand was just one of many reasons Saturday’s concert by Atmosphere felt like a truly big deal.
After packing the fairgrounds with their Soundset festivals every Memorial Day weekend in the late-2010s — and playing to plenty of other big hometown crowds over their 30 years together — Atmosphere rapper Slug and his DJ cohort Ant could have been blasé about their belated debut at the fair’s big stage. (The main reason they never played there was because the fair too closely followed Soundset for so many summers.)
On the contrary, the indie-rap pioneers went all out to make it a memorable, and maybe even historic, night. They brought along three other seasoned, esteemed rap acts from other cities: Los Angeles vets Cypress Hill and the Pharcyde, plus Chicago hitmaker Lupe Fiasco. They also recruited longtime homie Brother Ali to make a rousing surprise appearance at show’s end.
And they just brought it in general. After modern Minnesota pop-rap star Yung Gravy’s hair-brained 2023 appearance and some other questionably light and fluffy hip-hop performances on the grandstand over the years, this was one rap concert that hit hard and was full of heart and personality.
The scene: A resoundingly millennial- and middle-aged crowd — lots of Twin Cities babysitters will have extra spending cash for the fair’s nine remaining days — most of the 12,306 attendees were old enough to have caught Atmosphere’s original Soundset parties at First Avenue in the late-1990s. Throw in the cool summer’s-edge weather and a blazing sunset, Saturday’s show was a reminder of what made those full-scale Soundset fests of the 2010s so enjoyable beyond the great music.
The music: It was a good night in the music department, too. Despite the old-school crowd, Atmosphere dropped in a heavy smattering of recent tunes early in its set as if to reiterate that it’s still cranking out new records and putting some fresh spins on its sound every couple of years.
The night’s newest tune, “Really” — from next month’s upcoming record “Jestures” — showed a reggae dancehall influence that paired nicely with Cypress Hill’s overtly weedy performance. Other modern songs like “Okay” and “The Loser Wins” followed a similar feel-good, problems-shrugging vibe. Later in its 75-minute set, though, Atmosphere went way, way back to mark its 30th anniversary with “God’s Bathroom Floor” and “Scapegoat.”
Conversely, Cypress Hill stuck largely to its best-known tunes from more than a quarter century ago. Those included “Insane in the Brain” and “Hand on the Pump” near the start of its hourlong set, and “I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That” and “(Rock) Superstar” near the end — each heavily pumped up after all this time by the band’s stellar drummer, Eric “Bobo” Correa.
