Early Atoms Family Appearances Week, Day 3: The Persecuted Artifact

This is going to be the most obvious in Early Atoms Week: The Persecution of Hip Hop.  It's a compilation album like Public Exposure, where a whole bunch of indie, mostly east coast artists get a track to shine.  But this one's a double LP vinyl release on Centrifugal Phorce, Da Cryptic One's label.  And because it's his label, The Atoms Family gets a lot of extra representation here.  Like seven song's worth.  It almost feels like an Atoms album.  The majority of the album still consists of other artists, but nobody even begins to tip the scales like the Atoms.

They cover it up a little bit but giving a bunch of the Fam solo songs.  So it doesn't look like a whole bunch of songs by the same crew but one song by Vast Aire, one by Cryptic, one by Alaska, and so on.  A really great side effect of this, though, is that this album is really where I learned to recognize all the individual members.  'Cause The Atoms Family is a big crew with a whole bunch of MCs; and it didn't make things any less confusing when their first album consisted of a bunch of members who quickly dropped out and were replaced by the current roster.  So all of these guys having distinctly credited solo songs spread across the compilation really taught fans to recognize, "okay, this is Vast Aire," and "Windnbreeze is the guy who raps like that."  Up until Persecution, The Atoms Family was in danger of being a giant collective of anonymous dudes who rap together.

There aren't any songs, in fact, credited to The Atoms Family.  It's just ____ of The Atom's Family.  And a couple songs even leave that off.  That's how the first song is billed: it's called "One 2 Your Ear" by Kasm and Alaska.  It's a pretty smooth cut, produced by Kasm, with a super cool bassline and a nice mix of Guru vocal samples for the hook.  Kasm and Alaska just pass the mic back and forth kicking some relaxed freestyle rhymes.  It's a real head nodder.

Vast Aire is up next with a solo song called "Adversity Strikes" produced by Cryptic One.  Cryptic's beat is an ill, atmospheric sci-fi influenced beat that heralded their best work.  This is pretty much the song that introduced Vast to the world and he sounds great.  It has a classic hook, "I'm from the Atoms Fam, and it's the small things that count 'cause the atom's a small thing with a large destruction amount."  A remix of this song appeared on The Atoms Family compilation album, The Prequel; and they later made a sequel to this song called "Adversity Struck" for a 2003 compilation called Embedded Joints.

Alaska's solo song "Who Am I?" is next.  It's got a compelling track by Cryptic that draws you in with more choice Guru for the hook ("who am I? I'm the substance that'll make your third eye cry").  Alaska definitely spits the hardest rhymes of the crew, almost yelling for his delivery, but he's still spinning fast-paced, complicated wordplay in his lyrics.  And it's around this time on the album that I started to realize The Atoms Family guys are noticeably tighter than almost anybody else on this album.  Not 100% everybody, but by and large, they're stealing the show.  A new remix for this song later appeared on The Prequel.

Da Cryptic One comes up next.  He produces and raps "Sexual Harassment (Case #file#050971)."  There's a lot of wordplay that makes it a little confusing to follow, but I think the basic idea is that it's an angry, sexually graphic extended metaphor for the music industry using people: "some cool dude wraps his lips around your plastic smooth tube until you've been blown up. The vision made me throw up.  You dumb sluts continue to suck shit; I told you to slow up.  Dumb fucks!  I guess that's why you're fresh out of luck.  Your ass lasts a year, only a mere minute, fool; left in the cold naked, holding on your miniature tool.  You shake and twitch, your life slips through the cracks in the pavement, amazing how quick you got pimped into that mental enslavement with no future.  Wonder where your past went?  I find this industry guilty of rap sexual harassment."  Cryptic later produced a sequel to this song called "Sexual Harassment (Casefile #031272)," on the Atoms Family Prequel album, with Alaska on the mic this time.

Finally comes the one and only Atoms Family crew song on the album: "Not For Promotional Use" by Vast, Cryptic and Vordul.  Again produced by Cryptic, the energy is really high on this one.  The production is incredible on this one, and the guys gel perfectly over it.  It's like the perfect middle ground between back packer nerd rap and hardcore battle rhymes.  Lyrically, the subject matter's maybe a little basic compared to other Atoms' songs, but you could still put this their greatest hits album.  It's one of those songs you want to replay as soon as its over.

This brings us to the last solo song, WindnBreeze's "Nothing Really Happens."  It's a very playful unspooling of wordplay for wordplay's sake.  He's saying basically nothing just because it sounds good, over a simple but supportive beat by Cryptic.  "like a grasshopper hopping over blades of grass while I cut blades of grass with two cut blades of grass attached at the end to make a blade of grass scissor."  Okay.  It's just amusing nonsense that sounds nice, showcasing the kind of flow Wind was experimenting with.  It kind of feels like a lyrical version of those Skratch Picklz practice tapes, where they'd just cut up one vocal sample over another over the same break beat for minutes on end.  It's less of a proper song than an exercise, but in the end it sounded so good, they'd sell it to the public.

And that's mostly it for the Atoms Family songs on here, except the last song on the album is "Outta My Head" by The Imperials with a guest verse by Cryptic.  He kicks some packed punchlines and battle rhymes on a solid track alongside the other guys.  It's not as tight as the previous six Atoms song, but it ain't bad.

Apart from that, the album's alright.  At the time, it was also noteworthy for putting out the indie super group Deep Puddle Dynamics before they came out with any of their own records.  It's a slightly rough, early version of "Rain Men" without some of the scratching that was on the records later released by Anticon.  Other noteworthy acts include Dragons of Edin, Octavious (I have his old Descent and Dissention EP... I need to revisit that one day) and a cool track by Dr. Strange of The Lenzmen.

The only thing that makes this less than absolutely essential for Atoms fans is the fact that more than half of these songs were later re-released on their Prequel album.  "Not For Promotional Use" is on there, as well as both "Sexual Harassment,"s, "Who Am I?" as well as its remix, and "Adversity Strikes" and its remix.  It also has two remixes of "Nothing Really Happens," but not the mix on here.  Besides that, all it's missing is "One 2 Your Ear" and The Imperials track, which isn't really an Atoms Family song.  So this is a cool album for completists and historians, but for most Atoms fans, it's probably more of an artifact than an essential.  Although it is cool that it's on double vinyl, whereas The Prequel is CD only.  So there's that.