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
wasyupdead? 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 scribblerslike mewill cringe at having to write, let alone
say, the new title. Thanks a bunch, dude.) And yet there it isthe
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