Full disclosure: Along with Sony Playstation, House of Blues, and Sandman's House of Hip-Hop, the Planet is co-sponsoring this top-notch cavalcade of intelligent rap. Why? Because it's pretty much hands-down the best cutting-edge urban show to check into a medium-sized Bay area venue this year, that's why, and you know from long experience that we're total snobs when it comes to hip-hop.
If you only know headliner Mos Def from his role as Ford Prefect in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, then you should probably go get a CAT scan, because you might be musically retarded. In addition to acting, promoting spoken word and making rock music with his star-studded Black Jack Johnson project, he's been a critically hailed linchpin of the artier side of the East Coast rap scene since the mid-'90s.
One of his earliest and best recorded efforts, '98's Black Star, was a collaboration with a then little-known, nimble-tongued revolutionary called Talib Kweli; he has since moved on to his own major-label deal and status as the Great Black Hope for bringing smarts back to the mainstream.
Rounding out this sick bill are unbelievable female NYC emcee Jean Grae (who has guested on just about everybody's album this year in the wake of her own, hailed '04 album This Week); gritty, politically active Somali rapper K'Naan; and veteran underground/alternative scene figure (and former half of Organized Konfusion) Pharoahe Monch. We cannot recommend this show enough, and we'd say that even if our name wasn't on the flyers.
The Breed Odyssey Tour, featuring Mos Def/Talib Kweli/Jean Grae/K'Naan/Pharoahe Monch, Sunday, Nov. 20 @ Masquerade, Ybor City. 8 p.m., $35.
This article appears in Nov 16-23, 2005.