When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold is the fifth studio album by the Minneapolis hip hop group Atmosphere. It was released on Atmosphere's own Rhymesayers Entertainment label on April 22, 2008. It was praised for Ant's synthesizer-based production and Slug's storytelling rap. The album features a cameo performance by singer-songwriter Tom Waits, who performs guitar and beatboxing on the song "The Waitress".

Release

The album was released in two different packages: a standard digipak and a limited edition (25,000 copies) 36-page hard-cover book featuring an illustrated children's story written by Slug and a bonus DVD entitled Sad Clown Bad Dub 13 containing over an hour of live footage and extras.

Reception

At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 68 out of 100 based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold debuted at number 5 on the US Billboard 200, selling about 36,000 copies in its first week. It is Atmosphere's first album to reach the top ten of the Billboard 200 and the highest charting release from the independent label Rhymesayers Entertainment.

Track listing

Personnel

Atmosphere Additional personnel