DJ Madhatter is perhaps best known around Milwaukee as the DJ for the Rusty P's, one of the city's longest running, most popular hip-hop groups,

Gambit is summarizing the namesake for his 12member rap group, the Marvel Comics crossover epic House of M. “Basically, there’s this character, the Scarlet Witch, who can change realities and probabilities,” he explains. “She has this big mental breakdown, and she ends up changing the whole Marvel world. It’s up to all the superheroes in the Marvel universe to band together and get the world back to normal. As his X-Men-derived alias suggests, Gambit has a passion for comics in general, but this particular story line has special relevance for him. “It symbolizes our group,” he says.

EMC were in their tour van, en route to a Los Angeles concert this January, when they heard the news: A full two months before its official release date—and just four days after it had been mailed to the media— their debut album, The Show, had been leaked online. “We were angry, especially since we think we know who leaked it,” says Stricklin, the Milwaukee rapper who makes up the group along with veteran lyricists Punchline and Wordsworth and golden-age icon Masta Ace. “We rushed to the hotel so we could get an Internet connection and find out more.” Thanks to the Internet, you can watch the band work out their response to the leak in real time . . .

Jay-Z had it easy. He faced few restrictions in his quest for money and stardom. Unapologetically driven by material desires and founded on a platform of social Darwinism, Jay-Z’s ascent to mogul-hood represents capitalism in its purest form. Like most rappers, Talib Kweli wants what Jay-Z has—money, esteem, an audience—but in his pursuit of these goals he’s been held to a much stricter standard than Jay-Z. Long ago labeled a conscious rapper by his fans, Kweli is expected to be above the perceived vanity of mainstream rap. While rappers like Jay-Z can play anything-goes, Tammany Hall politics, Kweli must adhere to restrictive campaign finance regulations or risk alienating his idealistic fans.

Hard-touring rapper Talib Kweli returns to Milwaukee for a 7:30 p.m. performance at Marquette University’s Varsity Theatre tonight. In recent years, Kweli has found a comfortable balance between his status as one of the underground rap scene’s favorite conscious rappers and one of mainstream rap’s long-shot stars, releasing . . .

Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh revisits the Dead repertoire with a rotating cast of musicians that he bills as Phil Lesh and Friends tonight at 10 p.m. at the Briggs & Stratton Big Backyard; The Roots are the only major rap act to play Summerfest’s whitewashed line-up this year, but at least they’re an uncompromising one...

The title of tonight’s 10 p.m. bill at the Stonefly Brewery, “A Tribute To Inspiration: An Evening of Public Enemy,” overstates its case a bit. Milwaukee’s meat-and-potatoes rappers weren’t overly inspired by Public Enemy’s riotous cacophony, as least no more than any other rappers. Nonetheless, tonight . . .