There's been a lot of talk about how Atmosphere have slipped since their breakthrough Lucy Ford EP; some people put the pinnacle at God Loves Ugly, and everyone's entitled to their opinion. This is the kind of thing that happens when you become underground hip-hop's most recognizable stars, no matter what kind of quality trajectory your releases follow. Expectations rise right along with the ticket and album sales.

You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having gives a cursory nod to the pitfalls of success, starting with the Slug-bored-in-the-(literally)-green-room cover photo and continuing with "Watch Out", in which Atmosphere's MC castigates fans who "don't want to see you climb up from the underground". I'm sure a lot of rap fans would trade their problems for his any day, but that bit of poor-little-rich-boy is fine. What isn't so fine is the fact that Slug seems to be recycling a lot of his old saws -- girls, booze, a smattering of politics -- and boring himself even more than his audience. Not that he's stopped bringing his whoop-ass to school or anything: "Panic Attack" is an incisive critique of overmedication ("Do you call yourself a patient or a junkie? / The only thing that separates is who takes your money"). There are two paths to success for an MC -- grow as much as you can from record to record, or continue doing what has worked for you in the past. Slug hasn't grown a whole lot.

Still, his lyricism and delivery are generally smart and entertaining, and Ant's production goes even further toward making You Can't Imagine... a thoroughly enjoyable record. The between-track transitions are especially good -- cut-and-pastes of old-school topical samples, as in the myriad of "atmosphere"-themed snippets between opener "The Arrival" and the next track, "The Panic Attack", or brief bits of jazz and soul tunes. The songs themselves are fairly straightforward; notable cuts include "Smart Went Crazy", with itchy, weeping guitar and Motown samples, and "Little Man", whose evocative horn and vocal loops heighten the emotion of Slug's love note to his son (and in the second and third verses, his less-loving missives to his father and himself). Ant keeps getting better at combining the old into something that sounds completely new.

It's hard to say whether You Can't Imagine... would pass the "unknown" test -- if it would be hailed as groundbreaking, released by a less "up" and more "coming" group than Atmosphere. It's definitely their most accessible release to date, which may make it the latest stepping stone on their journey to major-labeldom. Maybe more mainstream recognition will give Atmosphere the freedom to go back to knocking down walls, or maybe it'll serve as a prelude to obscurity. It all depends on their next couple of albums.