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Thursday, May 7
An enthusiastic Japanese adopter of the Chicago house mutation known as footwork, Foodman took that music’s hyperspeed splatter to unforeseen extremes. His brief flirtation with Diplo’s Mad Decent label in 2019 would seem strange until you remember that in his pre-AI bro days, Diplo used to make genuinely exciting music, and Foodman’s boombox-from-another-planet aesthetic has as much in common with the .mp3 Wild West of the mid-2000s as the giddy futurism of hyperpop. His music is stuck between worlds, with gravity pulling it every which way. Swan Dive, 727 SE Grand Ave. 9 pm. $26.84. 21+.
Friday, May 8
Just as every rock biopic has to fight against Walk Hard comparisons, every rapper mounting a symphonic show has to contend with memories of Cypress Hill’s orchestral disaster on The Simpsons, or billy woods’ famous bar “I don’t wanna see Nas with an orchestra at Carnegie Hall.” Rick Ross, the Oregon Symphony’s latest collaborator, is light-years beyond such concerns, and his music needs as much room to spread out as it can get anyway; his luxury rap is pure escapism, the music you put on when you’re flying coach to feel like you’re in first class. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway. 7:30 pm. $42–$185. All ages.
Friday, May 8
SUSS started making dust-swept, country-tinged soundscapes in 2018, right around the time the coastal music cognoscenti sloughed off their Toby Keith-era prejudices about country and realized the genre had room for freaks—including three grizzled punk vets who’ve been kicking around the ’80s and suddenly found themselves at the forefront of a wave of ambient country music that includes Portland’s Barry Walker, Oakland’s Chuck Johnson, and Austin’s More Eaze. Polaris Hall, 635 N Killingsworth Court. 8 pm. $26.20. 21+.
