w/Killah Priest, Bazaar Royale, DJ Sayeed

Wed March 19, Chop Suey, doors at 8 pm, $13 adv.

Born and raised in Brooklyn--and once a prominent member of Marley Marl's Juice Crew--Big Daddy Kane was one of the four MCs who by 1988 (the year he released his debut LP, Long Live the Kane) had established rap's modern period. Like Rakim ("Follow the Leader"), Kool G Rap ("It's a Demo"), and Chuck D. ("Bring the Noise"), Big Daddy Kane made words elastic, accelerated raps, and multiplied puns, references, and alliterations. Before him and his three peers, the rap form dominated the rapper; after them, the rapper dominated the rap form.

At this peak point of hiphop history, there were no boundaries for a talented MC like Kane, whose success had less to do with what he was saying--though Kane certainly had many interesting things to say, such as he did on the wonderful utopian reverie "I'll Take You There" ("No one faces problems, no one says sorry/And war ain't nothing but a game on Atari/This message also applies to other nations/Like Africa... where there's starvation/But if you come with me, you're sure to see/Ethiopians can eat in Red Lobster for free")--than the imaginative way he said these things. Most impressively, when the beat broke down, ruptured, Kane wouldn't trip and fall--he would instead rhyme over the sudden emptiness.

Kane was also what British critic Kodwo Eshun calls an "analogy machine," the best of his rhymes "powered by analogic chains": I'm like this, I'm like that, I'm like so and so, and so on. To conclude this too-short preview, I will leave you with one of Kane's best "analogic chains," which he produced on Daddy's Home (1994) for the track "Sex According to the Prince of Darkness": "I'm not the Ku Klux Klan but I stay under sheets/And when it comes to sex, yo I'm the illest/Plus I know more Diff'rent Strokes than Arnold and Willis/I make you feel the reel to reel you feel/when I break the headboard down like Shaquille/Then bend over doggy style and just watch me/Ride yo' black ass like I was still filmin' Posse."