AB-SOUL COMES TO MAVERICKS

“If we could link up every gang/and niggas is willin’ to bear the pain/we put the White House lights out today.” So raps Herbert Anthony Stevens IV, better known as Ab-Soul, on the aptly titled “Terrorist Threats,” off 2012’s Control System, a ferociously intense, politically minded, confident-yet-vulnerable set of tracks that won all sorts of critical acclaim. In June he dropped These Days …, an indulgent 90-minute effort that concludes with 17 minutes of WTF spoken word and has too many collaborators and discordant interludes, but nonetheless solidifies Ab-Soul’s place as hip-hop’s self-proclaimed “genius idiot.”