Atmosphere - The Woman with the Tattooed Hands

"There's good and evil in each individual fire."

Album: Ford Two EP
Genre: Hip Hop, Midwest Hip Hip, Alternative Hip Hop
Album Release: September 1st 2000
Length: 3:31
Producer: Ant
Vocalist: Slug [age 28]
Label: Rhymesayers Entertainment

Official Audio


Live in 2008

Charts, Sales & Streams

Spotify: Over 8 million
YouTube Music: Over 4 million

Credits

Details.

• The Woman with the Tattooed Hands is about more than a man watching a woman masturbate. There's an old story about left hand hate and right hand love which is used to describe the world as a constant battle between two opposing forces. Slug is using the image of a woman with two identical tattoos of naked girls to describe his relationship with women. The right hand is God and the left is the devil, or love and hate, which also represent heaven and hell. It's those closest to us that can hurt us the most, and often that person is a significant other.
  
  Slug rhymes about women a lot, but on this track he takes it further, venturing into the realm of the religious, "a glimpse of religion, a piece of coming closer, to understanding more about what intrigues me most." Sex is closely linked to religion because religion, especially those that see humans beings as made in God's image, value life, and sex is how we create life.
  
  Slug has such strong feelings about women that, for him, it's like a religion "for each one I've hurt and every time I've been burned" is a line that places him on both sides of failed entanglements while acknowleding that if one person doesn't get hurt it's the other.
  
  When we are in relationships is when we are closest to God because the primal emotions they evoke connects us to our true nature: as a biological organism concerned with its own survival and passing our DNA down into the next generation. Never are we closer to God than when we make new life, which is why sex is such a core drive. So it comes as no surprise that an emotionally honest rapper like Slug puts his relationships with the opposite sex at the forefront of his music.
  
  Many rappers treat women as objects of sexual gratification but in Atmosphere's music it's different. The objectification is still present, but Slug uses his rhymes to ask why he objectifies, while also asking himself what he wants from women and questioning the affect they have on him and vice versa.

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