Overcast!

Rapper Slug and producer Ant have become such a long-running institution in indie rap that it can be kind of startling to hear what they were up to when they were still a largely unknown quantity. With their first album Overcast!, they sound well on their way to establishing the distinctly introspective and moody sound driven by Slug’s compelling frustration — “emo rap,” as it would eventually be dubbed-slash-cursed, though it still played a lot more like a product of working-class Twin Cities grown folks than third-ring teen suburbia. The presence of brief member Spawn hints at a dynamic that the short-term rapper’s presence might’ve shaken up considerably — a slyly self-assured counterpart to Slug’s verge-of-panic edge, but with his own emotional heft to work with (like the devastating remembrance of his father’s passing, “Caved In”). All the other pieces are already in place: Ant’s ability to whip up a zero-bullshit DITC-caliber hardcore headnod beat like “Brief Description” or “Multiples” is evenly matched by Slug’s persona-complicating bursts of good-natured arrogance, while their soufully ruminative, often-unnerving dramatic turns over suspenseful cinematic productions like the paranoid blame-flinging denials of “Scapegoat” and the interpersonal struggles of “Adjust” provide the identity-shaping nuances that began a long career of self-interrogating lyrics.