1) The Grouch & Eligh Go G+E! (Legendary)

2) Rick Ross Deeper Than Rap (Maybach/Poe Boy/Def Jam)

3) Aesher Roth Asleep in the Bread Aisle   (SRC/Universal)

4) DOOM Born Like This (Lex)

5) Mr. Lif I Heard It Today (Bloodbot/Traffic Ent) 

The Grouch & Eligh, who were number one at the San Francisco store last week, are also holding down the number one slot at Hollywood Amoeba this week with Say G&E!, the sometime hip-hop duo's third collaboration in a series on Legendary Music. And this past Monday (April 27th) they put on a great free in-store show at the San Francisco Amoeba. "It was awesome!," reported Amoeba's Luis from the Haight Street store. "Scarab and Very, aka Afroclassics (who recently released The Classic EP on Legendary Music), got it going when they went on first and performed for about half an hour. Then DJ Fresh (the DJ for the whole show) got busy. And then the Grouch and Eligh came on and wrecked it."

The Living Legends duo, Luis reported, did songs spanning their long respective solo and joint careers, much to the delight of the lucky in-store attendees. Songs off the new album they performed include the title track, "Say G&E!" Also doing well at each three Amoeba stores are the latest from both (MF)DOOM (Born Like This on Lex Records) and the politically charged Boston emcee Mr. Lif (I Heard It Today on Bloodbot through Traffic Entertainment).

Funny how time flies by. Already it is eleven long hip-hop years since Minneapolis, Minnesota hip-hop duo Atmosphere, comprised of producer Ant and emcee Slug (L-R in photo left), responsible for putting the Twin Cities firmly on the hip-hop map, dropped their debut album, 1997's Overcast!.

Last Tuesday they dropped their fifth studio album (and finest release to date): When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold on Rhymesayers Entertainment.

As you can imagine with this brand new album just dropping, both members of Atmosphere are pretty busy, caught up in their current tour which hits LA and San Francisco next week.  They will stay that way for much of the year as they promote this new release.  But in the past few days I had the opportunity to catch up with Slug, via email, to ask him about hip-hop, the new album, the word on a future Felt (with     MURS) album, and how it feels to be going strong eleven long hip-hop years later.  Did he ever envision himself being where he is now in his career?  "Ha. Yeah. I think our expiration date was somewhere in 2002 but I'm not complaining," he replied.  "I'll keep going 'til I get fired or replaced by a younger stronger, more attractive idiot."

 "Our approach musically was different.  We wanted to find a bigger but more minimal sound for this album," he says of how When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold is unlike previous Atmosphere releases, adding that,  "Lyrically, I wanted to write about other people's problems for once."  The new 15 track album (avail in two different packaged CD versions) is rich in ever-engaging, flawed character driven, tales, many tackling the issues of parenthood, like "In Her Music Box" and "Shoulda Known."  In the latter song Slug raps: