The MC half of Minneapolis hip hop group Atmosphere with producer Ant, Sean “Slug” Daley got his stage name from his childhood nickname:

Slug is actually short for Sluggo which is actually short for little Sluggo which is what my name was as a child cause my fathers nick name was Sluggo. And so all of his friends called me little Sluggo which stuck once I started getting my own thing, you know?

Slug was exposed to funk and soul by his father at 5 years old, and to hip hop on local Minnesota urban radio at 11. He formed his own “Juice Crew” from his group of friends and found inspiration from KRS-One and other late 80s “golden era of hip hop” MC’s.

In 1995, Slug was a member of a collective of Minnesota rappers and beatmakers known as HeadShots. They made mixtapes of their music that they gave away for free. By 1997, the collective was Slug, Ant, Brent “Siddiq” Sayers, Derek “Spawn” Turner and Musab “Beyond” Saad. Slug, Spawn and Ant formed Atmosphere and released their debut album in 1997, but Spawn left the group for personal reasons soon after.

Three months before Atmosphere released their third album Seven’s Travels, a 16-year old female fan was raped and murdered by a recently-paroled janitor who worked at the venue where Atmosphere was performing – an event that would inspire a change in Slug who would “transition to try to be a more responsible artist not just to the audience but to myself”. Seven’s Travels became Atmosphere’s first of several consecutive albums to peak in the top half of The Billboard 200.

Slug, Ant and Siddiq run Rhymesayers Entertainment (RSE) – a company that would eventually become “the Twin Cities' biggest record label”. Slug is also a member of Felt, The Dynospectrum, Deep Puddle Dynamics, Slug & El-P and also regularly appears as a guest MC on several other rappers' songs.