Black Nasty

Looking for a tasteful verse on Black Nasty's latest is like looking for a pleasant image in a manual of genital-ravaging STDs. Born and raised in Wichita and now based in Austin, Nasty has invented himself as a raunchy, disease-spreading, white-boy rapper who spins tales of scatology, necrophilia and all manner of beyond-the-pale depravity. I give bitches the motherfuckin' creeps/They get freaked/When they see my plastic sheets, he explains on "Mystery Meat." The material on Shark Tank, his third release, is no worse than what's going on in the id of your typical young American male — it's just that Black Nasty is so screamingly vivid and articulate. In "Three Hole Punch," he awakes in an unfamiliar woman's apartment, escapes, and attracts unwanted attention on the street with his "period-blood goatee." On "Howz My Shit Taste?" (a duet with Black's real-life sister, the more socially acceptable singer Pink Nasty), verses are directed at a guy who's dating an ex of Black's who displayed a fondness for our anti-hero's fundament. On paper, it sounds awful, but as Black unloads his libido over jaunty hip-hop beats in painstaking, clever rhymes geared for maximum humor and shock value, it's obvious that he means mainly to entertain.