Atmosphere Album: “Overcast! [PA]”

If u love dark, boom-shattering, grimey, raw, and old-school hip hop, then Overcast is for you. Of all the Atmosphere albums, Overcast is by far the most pure, most hardcore hip hop sounding album. If you want your UNDERGROUND hip hop albums to be dark, chilling, and grimey, u must cop this album.

Slug's flow is perfect on Overcast. He got more 'talky' in his later albums and less with the smooth rhyming. Basically i enjoyed all his albums, it's just that Overcast is by far the greatest.

i'll rank this album right up there with the UNDERGROUND greats: Aceyalone: All Balls Don't Bounce, Deltron 3030, & Pete Rock/CL Smooth: Main Ingredient.

My ranking of the Atmosphere albums:

1) Overcast

2) God Loves Ugly tied with Lucy Ford

3) Seven's Travels

some may argue the fact that a new age album could be nothing but noise. With Overcast: Atmosphere, you are getting a hypnotic mixture of beats and poetry. This may be one of the only albums that could be listened to reapetedly with out the slightest change in satisfaction with every ryhme and hit of the drum. If you are looking for an album that you can listen to while you party, drive, talk on the phone, or just go to sleep, this is the album. Atmosphere isn't for black kids, and it isnt for white kids...Atmosphere isn't Rap music, hip hop music, or rock 'n' roll music...it's life music. So allow yourself to slip in to an ecstasy, and have a conversation with the lyricist.

This album in my opionon is the best of all of Atmosphere. This is really the underground Atmosphere. The album was released in 1997 and very few to no people knew about this group. In Overcast!

there is two mc's Slug and Spawn before he left Atmosphere and fellow producer Ant. This cd has the closest style of underground hip-hop like Slug's group Headshots. Headshots Volume 7 is the best of all, but until Headshots Volume 7 comes out on cd in 2005, this is the best Atmosphere album.

Overcast is the perfect first album...not counting "headshots"...that any hip hop group could release. It's been called "life music", and that pretty much sums it up. The beats are much more laid back than anything else that they've put out, and WAY less..."emo"...for lack of a better word. Spawn isn't up to par with slug, but very few people are, so its not a very big deal, and he doesn't stand out or anything. All the songs are amazing, well produced, and essentially perfect. but again, this is not atmosphere's best. Lucy Ford is by far the ultimate atmosphere cd. but even still, this album is not mediocre..or anywhere remotley close to that. buy this now and cry tears of joy

Atmosphere's first studio album compiled of Slug(Sean Daley), Ant(Anthony Davis) and Spawn(Derek Turner)aka Rek The Heavyweight. After reading several reviews, I can understand in some ways how reviewers would call this their greatest album. However, I also understand that this album was released when Atmosphere was still trying to discover a sound to call their own...if you listen to the lyrics and more importantly, the production...you will hear a very solid presence of that NY and LA boom bap sound and lyrical delivery. Slug said it himself....this was during a time when Atmosphere wanted to release a studio album but haven't discovered a sound to classify the Midwest. Now ask yourself, if it's Atmosphere as a conglomerate that makes you label this as their best release or is it that the sound is all to familiar to that popular NYC "golden era" hip hop sound. Naturally, if you listen to other Atmosphere releases according to the year that they were released(Lucy Ford, God Loves Ugly, Seven's Travels and You Can't Imagine...), you will hear how Atmosphere slowly but surely developed their own sound and that's what I think some fans can't grasp a hold of. Hip hop is about originality in every aspect and not "biting" another person, group or sound. The main reason I enjoy this album, is because of the fusion of both Slug and Spawn. A small piece of me actually wishes that Spawn was still a member of the group. "Sound Is Vibration" and "Complications" are quite possibly the best two cuts on the album. Nevertheless, Atmosphere fans will definitely enjoy this whether this is your favorite or if you absolutely loved Seven's Travels(the worst Atmosphere release according to many reviewers, I'm still trying to figure that one out). There is no way that anyone with this album in their collection, should have this in a CD rack collecting dust. Shame on you.