Record party for Atmosphere

don't tell Minneapolis' Rhymesayers Entertainment crew that kids don't buy albums anymore. "This is as exciting for me as it is for them," rapper Sean Daley, aka Slug, said just before heading into the midnight CD-release party for his group Atmosphere at Fifth Element record store Monday night.

A thousand-plus young fans lined up in the rain outside the Uptown Minneapolis store to buy a copy of Atmosphere's "When Life Gives You Lemons...," released Tuesday. That they didn't already own copies of the record was a sign of success for Rhymesayers, Atmosphere's label, which went to great lengths to avoid illegal downloading before its release.

"I tried to find a copy of it [online] and came this close, but didn't get it," admitted Eric Conrad, 19, of northeast Minneapolis, who got in line around 10 p.m. "I still would've came out tonight even if I did get it already."

Some fans drove from Duluth, Grand Rapids and Willmar to attend the release party, where Slug and his beat-making Atmosphere partner Ant (Anthony Davis) autographed copies of the album.

"There's no place in our town where we can buy the record," said Willmar resident Marisabel Bautista, 20, who planned to drive home after the party.

Actually, thanks to a distribution deal with Warner Bros. Records, the new album will be available at Target, Best Buy and other major retailers. It was also on the new-releases storefront on iTunes Tuesday morning. But the Rhymesayers staff still wanted to create some old-school excitement at the neighborhood record store owned by the label.

"This is like it used to be back in the day, when an album's release date meant something and you couldn't wait until the day it came out," said Slug, whose group also played a MySpace-sponsored surprise show Sunday at 7th Street Entry.