Nancy Drew Crew

It's sometimes hard to understand how Nancy Drew Crew, a three-piece hip-hop troupe that evokes the Shaggs on a 909, can manage to be so dry and yet so exuberant and gleeful, all in the same rhyme. MC Smells, Mayhem, and Skullbuster may be winking at their audiences along the way, but their hooks keep fans busy shaking ass and sweating through their Descendents shirts. Theirs is a style of benevolent forthrightness, and in songs like "Feminist Anthem" and "College Incorporated," they manage an act of smirking dissent that is efficiently infectious. Tonight at the Triple Rock, they further flex their altruistic biceps, as money raised will go to the Coalition for Immokalee Workers, an advocacy group that sticks up for the rights of field workers victimized by fast-food plutocrats. Opposing fast food may be a breach of the hip-hop manifesto, but let's not be essentialists. With Single Speed, Guerrilla Blue, and Las Palabristas. 18+.
Sat., May 10, 9 p.m., 2008