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When Life Gives You Lemons ~ Fives Years Later

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About a week and a half ago, one of my favorite albums of all-time turned five years old. Many critics and fans cite Atmosphere’s You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having as the Minneapolis duo’s best work, and they’re absolutely right. You Can’t Imagine features Slug at the top of lyrical game and it is also features Ant’s strongest performance as a beatsmith. But when When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold was released on April 22, 2008, I was an 18 year-old senior in High School, facing a big transitional moment in my life.

At the time I thought there was no time more crucial than the impending months that were ahead of me. Lemons was the soundtrack to the ever-important “last summer of my childhood.” Of course in hindsight, I look back and laugh at how in the grand scheme of things, I was being just being your stereotypical, angsty teenager. (Hell, I was even listening to Taking Back Sunday’s Where You Want to Be during that time. Now that’s some serious angst.)

Was it the last time I would ever see my best friends? Was I in a love triangle that would ultimately lead to me finding my future wife? Was my life totally over if I didn’t figure out what I wanted to study at college? Was I totally fucked if I let my batting average drop below .400? No. No to all of these. 18 year-old me was a dumb ass. But he has a lot in common with 23 year-old me, so I empathize with him no matter how angsty he was.

In late April 2008, I was mere months from taking a huge leap into the “real world.” I thought “Guarantees” was about me and the total uncertainty I faced when I moved just under an hour away from my childhood home.

“The only guarantee in life is a life worth fighting for.”

Yes, I truly understood the mind of Sean Daley. And while I understood that “Yesterday” and “The Waitress” (especially the former) were about parent/child relationships, to me they were about girls. “Me” was another song I assumed Slug wrote after studying my every day activities.

“Wanna make me smile? Wanna make me laugh?/
Wanna make up for the mistakes in the past?”

I would write that especially poignant line (not at all sarcastic, to this day I love that line) on notes I’d write to a girl. Because 18 year-old me had wounds that would never heal, no matter how hard a woman of interest would try and fix (now this, is very much sarcasm). Again, I poke fun at the slightly fresher-faced version of myself because I totally get him.

As I write this, I too am at a transitional period in my life. I’m approaching nearly one year since I graduated from college, which was the same very place 18 year-old me was certain would chew me up and spit me out. Turns out I was wrong; I absolutely loved the four years I spent at Bowling Green State University. The year following my graduation, however, has been more or less a wash. I assume after a few years, I will look back at my time from May 5, 2012 until now, one year later, as some pivotal period when I learned a bunch about life and myself and all those clichés you get at the end of a coming of age movie. But as of right now, it sort of feels like I’ve spent this time waiting for the next phase of my life to start.

I’ve played Lemons around this time every year since its release (as well as other random times I’m on an Atmosphere kick), and I am amazed at how different my perspective is on a lot of these tracks. I’m still not all that fond of “Can’t Break” and “The Skinny,” but tracks like “Like the Rest of Us” seem to hit much closer to home these days. Today I tweeted the line:

“Everyone takes number one in the race/
cause we all running in place”

upon listening to the album’s mellow opener. It’s a line I find particularly notable, as I watch my peers struggling with the same quarter-life existential crisis I am: Did I choose the right career path? Am I ever going to pay off these loans? Am I going to die alone? Are the Cubs ever going to win the World Series? After spending time in the work force (including a part time gig working in food service back in 2009-2010), “You” is less of a pop song and more of “fuck my job” anthem. And lines like

“Ain’t nobody all that jolly at your happy hour”

from “Guarantees” are more relatable after holding down full-time gigs over the past 11 months (including a 4-month stint as a janitor).

The whole “am I going anywhere in life” is something I’ve dealt with a lot lately, which has sort of lead me to make this partially-mapped-out-but-still-sort-of-spontaneous-and-potentially-reckless life decision. In all likelihood this change I will be making this summer will not be as big of a deal as 23 year-old me is making it out to be. But I’m sure as hell not going to let this moderately improved self-awareness stop me from writing a novella about how an album turning five years-old sort of freaked me out. So yeah, right now I’m feeling a lot like that kid who thought for sure LeBron was going to bring Cleveland a championship. Older? Yes. Wiser? Possibly. Less neurotic? Not at all.

I got two hands and a bucket of paint.

Tags : Atmosphere
Goose

The author Goose

Goose is a talented writer who loves hip hop and writes for RapReviews and Okayplayer. Goose brings a fresh, new dimension to The Hip Hop Speakeasy and loves any opportunity he has to share the love of hip-hop that he knows so many people have.