If you lament the slow demise of poetic hip-hop groups like Arrested Development and Tribe Called Quest, you might have an alternative in Chicago.
But you can't be put off by the f-word or the smart-alecky, sing-song attitude of your new medicine. Using syncopated rhymes with a laid-back delivery reminiscent of spoken-word poetry, "Nerd Stuart" fronts and free-associates to glory. The approach, coupled with a muted trumpet, bells and walking bass lines, carries a sophisticated air, but this is no bespectacled, Cornel West-reading urban intellectual (never mind what he wears to the show). This South-Sider has a gift for observational and non-linear storytelling (inserting into a whine about his girlfriend the mantra "and OJ fit that f***in' glove"). In short, he finds beauty in the details, but the bragging and cusswords would make any gangsta rapper proud.
One small complaint: The songs leave plenty of room for backup players Ron of Japan (trumpets, etc.) Tony Aimone (drums) and Dave "Flav-r-ice" Smith (bass) to have some improvisational fun in the jazz milieu they create, but perhaps Smith and Aimone's days in the ska band Blue Meanies have robbed them of the necessary imagination to wow the crowd on their own.