Bumbershoot in a Box

Edited by Michaelangelo Matos

The idea was simple: From Woodstock to Barcelona's annual Sonar festival, lots of music festivals have released commemorative albums. What would a Bumbershoot disc look like? The answer, of course, is both "long" and "varied." So this year, we decided to put together our own conceptual package — which, as it turned out, took four CDs to house — that doubles as a highlights map and a go-to concert schedule. Rules were simple: one song per artist, from any point in their career. The result, a heady stew of rock, hip-hop, jazz, R&B, electronica, aural slapstick, and various combinations thereof, sounds pretty great — even if it isn't quite like being there.

DISC ONE

1. Nas, "Made You Look" (God's Son, Columbia, 2002) This opens with a gunshot and ends suspended in midair; in between, one of hip-hop's greatest and most uneven MCs gets hungrier than he's been in a decade. "You're a slave to a page of my rhyme book," Nas taunts, and between his vocal's steely menace and the deadly rhythm track (who'd have figured you could make a break as old and overused as "Apache" sound so new?), I'm guilty as charged. Welcome back. MICHAELANGELO MATOS

Nas plays the Mainstage at 9:45 p.m. Sun., Sept. 5.

2. Public Enemy, "Can't Truss It" (Apocalypse 91 ... the Enemy Strikes Black, Def Jam, 1991) Halloween 1991: I sat with my headphones on as my father handed out trick-or-treat candy and kept rewinding this track. It was the most terrifying thing I'd ever heard. The opening is a seasick meshing of distant moans, screams, ship creaks, slave-ship statistics, and Malcolm X. Later, I heard Public Enemy do "Can't Truss It" live on TV; it wasn't half as powerful. Of course, this is the album where PE decided to streamline their hyperkinetic cut-and-paste as they got even preachier, a move that cost them their mass audience. JESS HARVELL

Public Enemy play the Mainstage at 8:15 p.m. Sun., Sept. 5.

3. Brother Ali ft. Slug, "Blah Blah Blah" (Shadows on the Sun, Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2003) Southern rappers compress everything into a couple slurrrrred syllables; Northerners E-NUN-CI-ATE every word. And Midwesterners like Minneapolis' Brother Ali and Slug find the sweet spot between the two. Producer Ant loops some Sanford and Son incidental music, while Ali decides, "I wear my toilet paper so that y'all can kiss my ass/With your tongue out and write a love song about it." Even heard right, it probably means nothing, but I think Joyce and Larry Flynt would understand. JESS HARVELL

Brother Ali plays the What's Next Stage at 7 p.m. Sat., Sept. 4.

4. Blue Scholars, "Blink" (Blue Scholars, www.bluescholars.com, 2003)

"Been fighting in the belly of the titan," MC Geologic notes on DJ Sabzi's leisurely, loping funk — the horns are breezier Pete Rock, the breaks nice and loose. Which isn't true of Geo's rhymes, especially when he gets specific: "America romanticize the old war story/Heroes, ammo, blood, guts, and glory/And no wonder the majority wants a war with Iraq/Even if only 15 percent can find it on a map." MICHAELANGELO MATOS

Brainstorm 4 B-Boy Battle Finals with Blue Scholars happens at the Center Circle Spin at 4:15 p.m. Mon., Sept. 6.

5. Ursula Rucker, "Circe (Jazzanova Remix)" (Jazzanova: The Remixes 1997 2000, JCR, 2000) Ursula Rucker may have top billing, but Jazzanova are the stars here. As part of the loosely knit broken-beat scene, the German collective with the most barf-bag-worthy name in dance music run the risk of disappearing up their own time signature, and Philadelphia poet Rucker's voice is deployed with as equally ruthless effectiveness as any other sample in their kit. But their fidgety polyrhythms are grounded by their flair for classicist song and vocal arrangement. And if a bunch of white German guys making reverent Afro space jazz makes you a little nervous (or queasy), it's also quite beautiful, whatever the melanin count. JESS HARVELL

Ursula Rucker plays the NW Court Lounge at 8:30 p.m. Sat., Sept. 4., and the Literary Stage at 2:30 p.m. Sun., Sept. 5.

6. Van Hunt, "Dust" (Van Hunt, Capitol, 2004) "I am dust blown away over the edge" is a sentiment that's easy to grasp, since an oversaturated neo-soul market has so far created more one-album wonders than career artists. But whatever happens to Atlanta's Van Hunt, "Dust" will live on: crackling guitar fuzz that keeps goosing the upbeat, fairy-dust synth sprinkles, the tightest drums this side of Kanye West, and Hunt and "a roomful of drunken fools" desperately hanging on to right now. MIKAEL WOOD

Van Hunt plays the Mainstage at 1 p.m. Sat., Sept. 4.

7. Adamski ft. Seal, "Killer" (12-inch, MCA, 1990) The billing says all you need to know. Adamski was a technohead who teamed with the then-unknown Seal to make a sinister record on the cheap; at a time when the U.K. was awash in smiley faces, it featured one of the most menacing bass lines ever heard on pop radio. It went to No. 1. Seal rereleased it a year later with supposedly beefier production. It went to No. 8. Still, he's had the hugely successful (if increasingly soporific) career; Adamski was most recently sighted in 2002, with a lame-joke electroclash cover of Wire's "I Am the Fly." JESS HARVELL