The Ten Best Concerts in New York This Weekend, 2/8/13

Rakim + Raekwon + 1Fifty1
Stage 48
Friday, 6pm, $38
Rakim is only two years older than Jay-Z yet from another era entirely, a time when raps could get you atop Mount Olympus but not seated next to Charlie Rose atop the Spotted Pig. Meanwhile, opener Raekwon's oeuvre left marks across the current rap diaspora, influencing Action Bronson and "new" New Yorkers as much as ascendant Atlantans like 2 Chainz. Still, the hyperbolic grotesquerie of today's cross-border drug trade renders his recent crime raps less compelling than his new, august love raps. -- By Rajiv Jaswa

The Residents
Stage 48
Saturday, 6pm, $27
For Residents fans with an extra $100,000 (cash, not the candy bar), art-rock's most recognizable collective of haut-couture eyeballs are offering up a fridge-encased box set of rarities to celebrate their 40th anniversary. For the rest of us plebs, we get to see the group do what it does best for less than 1/1,000 of the box-set price. Expect a theatrical performance worthy of its midtown beyond-Broadway venue, one that draws from the group's 60-plus LPs of un-commercial slop-pop smears. -- By Kory Grow

Chris Potter
Village Vanguard
Friday through Sunday, 9 & 11pm, $25
The tenor saxophonist's study of Homer's Odyssey pays off with The Sirens, a new album on which Potter approaches archetypal themes, including romance and homecoming, with a storyteller's patience. Expect epic narratives (including Potter mentor Wayne Shorter's "Penelope") to unfold when the lyrical powerhouse sets sail with Larry Grenadier (bass), Eric Harland (drums), and Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson. -- By Richard Gehr

Yob+Hull+Bezoar
Saint Vitus
Sunday, 7:30, $15
Lude-loving hippies who played their Ozzy-era Sabbath LPs at a dragging 16 r.p.m. foreshadowed the slow, sludgy, helium-voiced tones of Yob. The effect is even grander live, when vocalist-guitarist-ringleader Mike Scheidt literally moves the air around concertgoers with the full force of his amplifier and endlessly elastic lungpower. It's hypnotic, harrowing and, thanks to the collateral eardrum damage that comes with it, impossible to forget. With Hull and Bezoar. -- By Kory Grow

Frankie Knuckles+Chris Love & AB Logic+Classic
Cameo Gallery
Friday, 11:59pm, $15/$20
Frankie Knuckles is a New York native, but he truly made his name in Chicago as a resident DJ at clubs like Warehouse and the Power Plant, playing the scuffed and soulful tunes which later served as a template for house music worldwide and earned Knuckles the sobriquet "Godfather of House Music." Now pushing 60, Knuckles shows no signs of slowing down: His remix of Hercules & Love Affair's "Blind" displays a poised efficiency with anthems. The old-guard house heads should be out full force for this intimate gig. -- By Aaron Gonsher

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