Today, the term “posse” describes even bloated legations of out-for-dolo Diplomats who reworked communal call-and-response routines into solipsistic conversations with soul samples. Brownsville’s Smif-n-Wessun and Mash Out Posse, on the other hand, recall posses predating rap, bands of would-be outlaws coming into tight concert amidst civil unrest (see 1970 Trash Riots). Fully repping a neighborhood fraught with dispossession—both material (see M.O.P’s “Ante Up”) and spatial (see NYCHA trespassing policies)—this concert, with resurfaced initiate Ka, suggests the cipher will be unbroken.
Sun., Feb. 17, 8 p.m., 2013