Feeble non-emcee types like myself can't brag about such things, and I wanted to hear more about what the popular lunch table is actually like, but Slug didn't want to get into that with me when we spoke, days before he left for tour. As the vocal half of Minnesota's veteran duo Atmosphere, Slug, aka Sean Daley, alongside producer/DJ Ant, aka Anthony Davis, continues to push soul-baring, soul-sampling hip-hop across the U.S. and elsewhere, in support of the group's fifth record, You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having.

From the bored-looking, slouched-over photo of Slug on the album sleeve to the record's cynical, sneering title, You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having is loaded with the brand of snide, metaphor-ridden rhymes that heads have come to expect. The meaty backdrop is the work of Ant, who toiled on the production end of Slug's Felt project with Murs earlier this year, as well as for I Self Devine's LP. The mark he leaves here is a Premier/Just Blaze beatfest of soul, Motown bass lines and empty-saloon piano loops that advocates will also know well.

On You Can't, regular rotation is in order for harder pieces like "Watch Out," which doesn't much differ from the old-school crunch of Brother Ali's "Bitchslap," a memorable Rhymesayers nugget also fashioned by Ant. Slug peaks in this pissing contest with both comical ("You'll find me in the A's of your iPod") and defiant ("I sting like a first divorce") bragging, balancing both boasts with self-deprecation like only he can.

Another of the record's finer moments, the sultry head-nodder "Angelface," finds a spot in a series sponsored by he and his beatmaker that has gone on for years.

"'Angelface' is a song in a series of songs that me and Ant have done called 'Travel,'" he explains, over a sub-par cell phone connection. "Kids that have been around for a while might know it, and get it. I guess people that have been around for the last album or two might just think it's a song about groupies, I don't know."

As usual, Slug backs into a slightly self-effacing persona, or at least the position where he doesn't recognize his own reach.

"By no means is that song 'genius' - it's nowhere near as good as anything Dillinger Four has ever made - but at the same time, I definitely accomplished what I needed to accomplish with it, to get across the fact that I do like traveling, and this job."

Slug subs in female gender pronouns for most of the subjects in "Angelface," and drops shout-outs to cities, bars and nameless lost loves to the point that they're all lumped into one immortal, winged metaphor that he leaves behind when she falls asleep. He keeps these things from getting too close to him, and his "top floor" is "locked" for the very reason that touring is just another relationship he has, one that's constantly competing with those of a more concrete nature.

"Every one of those cities gets a metaphor of a woman, as to how that city treated me, how I felt about that city," he says. "My touring has been a relationship with a partner. It's got its ups and downs, it's got its excitements and inspirations, but it's also got its detriments, and the things it steals from my life, like the time it takes away from me that I'm not allowed to put into other things. So it's always kind of been somewhat of a relationship, almost like another girlfriend, that if I do have a real girlfriend, you know, they have to compete, they don't like each other."

"Angelface" is delivered like a road movie script, its bumpy ride characterized by Slug's ill-advised stop-offs in heartbreak country, a laundry list of things and places left behind on his eight years of touring alongside Ant. Slug seems to be dealing out heartbreak as often as it comes his way here, but that much has always played a part in this duck-and-run game of both possession and irony.

The cover and smart-assed moniker of You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having is a clear indication of Slug's further retreat into cynicism, and the lyrics need not say a thing about the record's relationship with irony. The empty, poorly lit backstage shot on the album sleeve beams with irony, and Slug's miserable mug doesn't do much to offset what would more than likely be an album brimming with complaints.

"Overall, the whole theme of the record is like, 'I'm sorry about all the complaining, because I do love my job,'" he says. "It's a great job. For all the bullshit that just comes with it, it's still a really good job."

But "Angelface" is a bitter pill, and Slug tramps shaky ground between regretting and celebrating the countrywide sleepovers and what he calls the "thin line between gossip and gospel."

"I'm embracing the fact that I'm not a fan of irony," he says. "I think irony is the lazy man's way. It sucks that people implement the irony. It's the lazy way. If they don't get your point, you can always kinda chuckle at them. It's as if irony makes fun of them for not getting your point instead of finding fault in your delivery of the point, or finding fault in your ability to execute and give somebody some information. If you go the ironic way, if they don't get it, it's their fault. Or if they don't get it, it's because it was over their heads."

The whole interview goes like this. Frankly, there were times when I could barely get another question in. Before I have a chance to interrupt, the dude launches a bare-fisted attack on one of the only television programs I consider myself married to.

"Honestly, I blame The Simpsons," he explains. "I think The Simpsons fucked up modern art. I'm sure I'm premature in saying that, and in all respect to Matt Gray-ning, or Groening, or however the fuck you pronounce that dude's name. They didn't invent irony, obviously, but they took it to a level of popular that a) it's fucked over television, and slowly film, and then music, and for Christ's sake, now, photography and painting. Art isn't cool anymore to the 'in' people, unless it can somehow make fun of the viewer, or the creator, or the people who never see it. I see it in all art now. It's kind of a last hope. What's going to be the next step? Straight up 'blatantism,' if that's even a word, is all that's going to be left. I could be totally stupid, maybe somebody's gonna come up with an idea and it's going to sweep the world. Irony, to me, is bullshit. But it's had a major influence on my life."

I wanted to construct an argument here about the profound influence that The Simpsons has had on my life, but this conversation isn't about me. It's about Slug, and we finally near a topic that has called him out into battle in recent years. When he isn't shaking off the typical "backpacker/elitist" criticism that goes with underground hip-hop, Slug is deflecting shots at him regarding what people have identified as sexist undertones in his words.

"My life became fucking ironic, dude," he says. "What have I been called? I've been called 'misogynist,' I've been called 'nerd rap,' I've been called 'white-boy rap,' I've been called 'manipulative and coercive.' I've been called all of these things, and how I see myself doesn't fall into any of these categories. However, it is myself and the things that I do that allow people to put me into these categories. If that's not irony, I don't know what is.

"I got my mom calling me, going, 'I read this interview in some weird magazine and they called you a misogynist," he continues. "Who the fuck are these people? I want to go beat them up.' There's your irony. She made a misogynist, yet she wants to go whoop somebody's ass for saying that about me. That became a metaphor for my life in general - for my relationships with women, friends, or co-workers, so to speak, all the way to my relationship with fans. It's almost like I didn't have any control of it. The more I try to control just myself, the less control I had over all of the dichotomy around me, and that's how I really got to see irony take its big step forward. I was like, 'Wow, the whole fucking world is under its influence.' I thought it was just some shit we made up in the Midwest. I thought sarcasm was some shit they made up out east, and irony was from here. Little did I know, they're fucking ironic in Ireland. No fair, man."

His details are distinct in all respects, and he's mouthy to the point that it's as if he's nine beers into it. By no means is anything muddled, though, other than when Slug shoots down his own responses ("That's the most bullshit answer anyone could possibly fucking give to a question like that") and/or retracts them altogether ("Actually I have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about dude, I just woke up"), and he rarely misses an opportunity to say a little more, or plow a shortcut into utter ridiculousness. But there are items explored on his record that he's evidently still making peace with, such as those solemnly discussed during "That Night."

The paralyzing tragedy that is recounted to some extent on "That Night" occurred in July of 2003. Atmosphere played a show at Albuquerque's Sunshine Theatre two summers ago, and during the set, a 22-year-old janitor (and convicted felon) raped and subsequently took the life of a 16-year-old Santa Fe girl who had attended the show. "That Night" maintains some distance from the horrific incident, though, and is closer to Slug's grappling with exactly how to present his feelings, often retracting and re-telling, like he does on the phone.

"It took me a long time to find my place in it," he says. "The song is about my take on it. I wanted to make a song about it because I felt I'd never really spoken out about it, but the problem is I don't want to speak out on it on some high 'n' mighty shit, because that is not respectful to the memory of her. That's me being an opportunist. I'm not an opportunist.

"I would never want her family to read anything I had to say, and make it look like I'm trying to get some spotlight because I was very subtly involved in an incident that changed their lives forever."

He explains further that the incident also changed his life, in that he is now overtly involved in greeting security guards and breaking up fights in the crowd, if any, as he recognizes his place in the safety of the audience. This is just one or two of the fleeting moments we have that aren't riddled with sarcasm and sometimes even self-doubt. He's confident and mature in this and at least one other discussion: his son, and the part he plays in You Can't closer "Little Man."

Another corner of Slug's life that has changed considerably is the one set aside for his 11-year-old son Jacob. On "Little Man," the emcee rattles off some impassioned notes to Jacob over sped-up soul vocals and a loop of woodwinds and brass.

"Granted, I'm going to do everything in my power to sway him from wanting to be a musician, and maybe even an artist in general. It's a beautiful thing, but there's a lot of heartache there, dude. Go be a veterinarian. Wait. Yeah. Go watch puppies die. OK. Yeah."

While he briefly pontificates on sending Jacob away from the music industry and perhaps its Ticketmaster rip-offs, record-label foul-ups and long-winded freelance writers, Slug's newer tour routine seems to emanate an ideology rather contradictory to these remarks. He's opening his sound up to an even bigger crowd, and possibly enabling some potential rockers on the way.

"I've toured the country like ten times now," he says, "and these kids have gotta be getting tired of seeing me do the same old shit. Aside from me getting pyrotechnics and cage dancers and shit, like, I don't know what the fuck to do to switch it up. I thought, 'I got an idea.' I got a couple of friends, from rock bands, jazz bands, funk bands. I thought I would throw this together."

His band idea isn't a new Atmosphere development, but they're writing the stuff together now, based on Ant's sampling and the duo's mood-making approach.

"Every show I play, 50 kids, they want to rap, too. Do the math. Fifty cities, 50 times 50. That's too many kids that wanna fucking rap. We don't need that many rappers. But now, I see these kids coming up and talking to the drummer. To me, it's fresh that I could come to your city and have anything to do with inspiring you to go to Guitar Center to try and steal a guitar.

"I feel like I got this fucking classic rock band, man. It's fucking awesome. I totally feel like Steven Tyler. It's sweet. I got big lips."

Even when it's book-ended by scatterbrained and sometimes nearly impenetrable mockery, Slug's outpourings come from a guy whose DIY ethic (his recently developed Women Records with Murs, his avocation of girlsrockcamp.org) is as important to him as anything else. While a fraction of the records he makes bothers people - who in turn write about it and bother his mother - Slug's adherence to making records, putting out records and expanding his reach is thriving rather well, and he's having fun - despite what we're supposed to think.

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