Ghostface Killah: The best way to spend your Halloween: a one-off show of the truest hip-hop talents all backed by the ten-piece Rhythm Roots All-Stars. With Rakim and Brother Ali. 7pm. $30-35.
VAULT 350 350 Pine Ave, Long Beach 90802. 888.80.VAULT; vault350.com.
Shipwreck: The last night to catch the monsters and mazes that annually invade the Queen [...]

T.S.O.L. doesn’t have to die

PHOTO COURTESY NITRO RECORDS

A year ago I had coffee with T.S.O.L. singer Jack Grisham. At the time, the group was prepping for two farewell shows at downtown’s Vault 350, the apparent final chapter of one of Southern California’s definitive punk bands. Fast-forward to a week ago, with Grisham calling from a [...]

Brother Ali’s Undisputed Truth

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY

Minneapolis’ Brother Ali is one of those unbeatable all-weather heavy tanks they roll off the line at Rhymesayers when independent hip-hop starts feeling too soft or too fuzzyheaded—a humble hard-working clear-eyed moralist who put out his first tape with money from a police-brutality settlement and who raps (over production [...]

E-40 trumpium my benevioulum

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY
Big L made a slang decoder on his single “Ebonics” in 1998 but Vallejo’s E-40 was already five full acrobatic albums ahead with his own personal language. “Fuck my (trumpium?) smile my (benevioulum?)” guessed one E-40 lyric transcriber, and so observe the talent of the man at work—if ‘fuck’ [...]

The Abyssinians versioned to eternity

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY
The Abyssinians were one of those rare bands who nailed down a classic in only a few notes: their “Satta Massagana” starts off as irrepressibly recognizable as “Harlem Shuffle” (bwant, bwah bwah, bwahhhhh) or “Hitch Hike” (bwomp-bwomp-bwomp-bwomp, bomp-bomp-bomp-bomp, bump-bump) (uncomfortable onomatopoeia just to remind you how they go), [...]