Nas

How will Nas top his declaration that a nuclear winter had smothered hip-hop in a patina of blinged-out bone dust and ashen rhyme structures? That it had lost its way traveling through the back alleys of imagined ghettos slimed with sonic sameness and lameness? That it was—yup—dead? By dropping the n-word, of course. Apparently that's the title of his upcoming album, and that's the only way he could've generated the kind of public squabbling and squawking his last release, Hip Hop Is Dead, did. (One wonders how many white liberal music scribblers—like me—will cringe at having to write, let alone say, the new title. Thanks a bunch, dude.) And yet there it is—the ghost of America's slave-trading past, rattling its chains in the digitized flows of one of the game's greatest. But then again, what did we expect from the "Last Real Nigga Alive"? With D. Black, Grynch, DJ Nphared. Showbox SODO, 1700 First Ave. S., 382-7877. 8:30 p.m. $37 adv./$40. All ages. KEVIN CAPP
Fri., May 16, 8:30 p.m., 2008