Here’s what My Philosophy recommends for you this evening:

Then on Friday, March 28, you have three ways to go for the hiphop. First is at the Vera Project, where Macklemore heads up an (natch) all-ages lineup featuring World Rap Champeen and member of Portland’s Sandpeople, Illmaculate. His Rain Check mixtape is pretty thorough; hit up his MySpace and hear the wreck he catches beyond the battle circuit. Also on the bill are Solstice, Sportn’ Life’s own Kingzmen, and the return of the 206’s Ricky Pharoe, who’s been living in Long Beach, storied homeland of the Dove Shack. If you want a slept-on SEA jewel, go get his and Tru-ID’s ‘06 LP The Key with No Lock, not to mention Pharoe’s ‘05 solo Civilized.

Also on Friday is the return of cult-favorite weekly Foot Traffic, now at the Lo_Fi. This night serves as the CD release for B-Girl’s album Love or Fate, and features Alpha P, Mind Movers, Jewels Hunter, Randy Hansen, and art from Onesevennine and Rogue LaRoc. That B-Girl album is another good comp from that Project Mayhem collective, pairing MCs with B-Girl’s own electro-eclectic production.

Bug in the Bassbin offers up this:

If that’s not enough Chop Suey for you, return on Friday for the fourth anniversary of Comeback, which as always will be a gay old time. For their anniversary (congrats!), they’re bringing in UK remixer extraordinaire Tronik Youth, who’s added his personal nu-electro touch to the Gossip, Chromeo, and Shinichi Osawa, in addition to putting out some well-received mixtapes that have left the blogosphere buzzing. He’s currently on a tour across the U.S. in support of his debut single “We Are,” released in October.

In Underage I give a little love to Set Your Goals, who are at Neumo’s tonight:

So on Friday, March 28, should you go to the StD show at Neumo’s, the best advice I can offer you is that you arrive early enough to see Set Your Goals, a pop-punk band who plow through two- and three-minute songs built on anthemic breakdowns with melodic hardcore influences (they’re named after a CIV song, after all). Their songs are about the usual suspects (girls, the need to escape, backstabbing friends) and there’s nothing new to the sound (pop punk is a genre with little room for innovation), but just a couple years ago they were playing the Viaduct in Tacoma, when it was a windowless hole that could hold about 30. Now they’re touring venues 20 times that size with Saves the Day.

Nada Surf is back at the Showbox at the Market. Here’s what Eric Grandy has to say about openers the Builders and the Butchers:

Nada Surf, the Builders and the Butchers
(Showbox at the Market) Alaska to Portland transplants the Builders and the Butchers assemble five people and friends to play guitar, bass, drums, mandolin, banjo, accordion, violin, xylophone, bells, washboard, etc. Singer Ryan Sollee’s reedy voice and the band’s old-timey instrumentation faintly recall fellow Portlanders the Decemberists, but where the latter band’s anachronisms tend toward the twee Victorian, the Builders and the Butchers evoke something more like the grim dust bowl and boxcars of the Great Depression. Still, they’re not strict historians—among their ballads of hard rains and “Spanish Death” is the odd lyric about lake-dwelling vampires. Whatever the subject, the ensemble’s songs and playing are winningly dramatic and worn. ERIC GRANDY

And finally…

The Corner: Cancer Rising, Silent Lambs Project, Candidt, Grayskul
(Rendezvous) Where is the true hiphop? One spot that has it regularly is the Jewel Box Theater at the Rendezvous. Here, once a month, there is a gathering of local hiphop heads. This gathering is intimate. Meaning, there is a close relationship between the audience and the performers. This closeness (and smallness) is its truth—a truth because this how it all began, in small spaces, in small rooms, in the small hours of the night. What is documented in the bibles of hiphop—Beat Street and Wild Style—is being practiced at the Jewel Box Theater. Tonight’s gathering will have as its core performers Cancer Rising, Silent Lambs Project, Candidt, and Grayskul. As Pete Rock put it: “In the beginning, let it be like the record spinning.” CHARLES MUDEDE