FM station 94.9’s Wild Jam 2012 was set for this Thursday, May 10, and featured the most interesting line-up yet for the station’s sporadic HP Pavilion megaconcerts. Nicki Minaj, E-40, Gym Class Heroes, B.O.B., Dev and Neon Hitch were set to perform, with the headliners billed as “Nicki Minaj vs. E-40.” An intriguing tease, especially considering E-40’s collaboration with headliner Drake at the 2011 Wild Jam. But a tease is all it will ever be, now that this week’s Wild Jam has been cancelled. The question is: why?

When the cancellation was first announced last week, this didn’t seem like much of a story. Big shows like this can be shut down for a lot of reasons, and when 94.9 organizers pulled the plug, they said details would be forthcoming. Listeners speculated online about what the reason might be—slow ticket sales, first among them. And yet, the station’s crew has not only not announced further details since then, they seem to be actively avoiding the question. A call to 94.9 was met with the canned reply “Due to circumstances beyond our control, the Wild Jam has been cancelled.”

If those circumstances were indeed beyond the station’s control, what’s the harm in explaining them? One thing’s for sure: the questions isn’t going away. Listeners have only gotten more hostile on the topic, posting comments to the station’s Facebook page like: “So I’m wondering what is going on with Wild Jam? There is no further ‘update’ as promised…in fact any info about it at all is gone from the website. I am just wondering why it had to be cancelled. Seems like 94.9 should at least explain what happened.”

Another listener declared “Maybe instead of giving out drake tickets to new people you should give out drake tickets to the people that got screwed over for WILD JAM! Very disappointed in this station.” Yet another asked what, if anything, would be done to compensate those who had won tickets, and then accused the station of censoring comments on the topic: “And it’s weird how this post keeps removing itself.”

How this became a PR nightmare is difficult to understand. The station’s Wild Jams have never been regular events (there were two in 2008, none in 2009, two in 2010, and one last year), so rescheduling wouldn’t seem to be an issue. Some listeners seem to think that headliner Minaj pulled out, since she dropped the show from her list of tour dates, but since she could have done that after the show was cancelled, there’s no way to say for sure at this point. Minaj’s next shows are May 16 and 18 in Australia.

Los Angeles-based producer Myndset has remixed everyone from Deadmau5 to Drake, and shared a stage with electro pioneers Steve Angello, Congorock, and Cedric Gervais. He spins at Los Gatos Bar & Grill on Thursday, April 5th. And over at SanJose.com, you can enter to win your very own private party, complete with VIP access and complimentary bottle service for up to five friends.

Myndset’s something of a blog favorite, and his Hype Machine remixes and repertoire of electro and progressive house tracks place him squarely alongside fellow internationalists Diplo and the Swedish House Mafia. The guy puts on a show, complete with oddball headgear and *gasp* – turntables. That’s worth a trip to Los Gatos, right?

Tyga, the Compton rapper and youngest signee to Lil Wayne’s Young Money crew, will make an appearance in San Jose this Saturday at Fiesta Nightclub.

Scheduled to perform in Santa Cruz earlier that night, it’s unclear which variant of “Rack City,” Tyga’s strip-club ballad, the San Jose crowd will be treated to—the dubbed out karaoke in which Tyga mumbles the chorus as the crowd auditions for him, or will he do his best to transform the remote suburban venue from club to cabaret? You’ll have to see for yourself.

Tyga stops in at Fiesta Nightclub on March 24. Tickets and info available here.

On November 10, 1891, Arthur Rimbaud died. On November 10, 2011, on the 130th anniversary of the hapless French poet’s death, Drake’s album “Take Care” was leaked. And for the last four months, he’s unknowingly embarked on a tour to resurrect Rimbaud’s central thesis of maddening love – in packed arenas across the country. And Friday at the San Jose State Event Center, the audience will respond.

A lofty premise, to be sure. We know the rapper is sensitive. The evening will see Drake speak, or rather sing, interspersed with moments of rapping. He’ll do it with some discomfort. Though a loner at heart, he so badly wants to be an accomplished showman, to command the world’s attention in a way that bigger icons like Jay-Z now seem born to do. The high paranoia and introspective dint of “Take Care” would seem to jibe better in an intimate setting—not a college stadium. And so, fortunate for him, the album’s true message is padded with hip-hop cliches like a spoonful of sugar, so you’ll better digest the emotional medicine.

In “Tale,” one of Rimbaud’s most famous poems from his collection Illuminations, he spoke of a monarch’s driving motivation – perfection in love:

“A Prince was annoyed at always being occupied with perfecting vulgar generosities. He foresaw amazing revolutions in love, and suspected that his wives could come up with something better than complacency adorned with sky and luxury. He wished to see the truth, the hour of essential desire and satiIsfaction. Whether or not this was an aberration of piety, he wanted it. He possessed at the very least a rather broad human power.

Drake thinks much about “vulgar generosities,” “revolutions in love,”, “something better than complacency adorned with sky and luxury” – and has tried to convince us to celebrate them.

None of his accomplices can know about this. The evening will begin with Harlem’s resident ‘it’ kid, A$AP Rocky, who, in the cyclical nature of popular culture is refreshing because he’s a nostalgic. As is Compton’s Kendrick Lamar, who once saw Tupac Shakur in a dream, and sometimes displays Pac’s ability to inhabit misguided spirits so he can better understand them (on the subject of dates, their birthdays are a day apart).

Drake will have to breathe life into some dispiriting material, and relive bravura highs and bravura lows in the span of a less than two hours set. If not heard in the appropriate order, “Take Care” is manic. The emoting can get intense, and the cagey, expected machismo he proffers in return might ring untrue to less sympathetic ears.

Just how he’ll distribute the story of his relationships will prove interesting—how will the narrative unfold? Will the saga of his recklessness, with confident and knowingly brash tracks, like 2010’s “Money to Blow,” or his verse on DJ Khaled’s posse cut “I’m On One” be paired next to the superficial idol worship of “Best I Ever Had” and “Make Me Proud”?

What he does best is pay homage—to women, to his family and sometimes unconvincingly, to himself. Strange as it is to ask a rapper to be further self-aggrandizing, it’s just as much in Drake’s interest, as it is in ours, that he celebrate himself.

Drake performs at San Jose State Events Center on March 10 with Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky. Tickets are sold out.

Enter the world of ASAP Rocky: a cherubic blonde with gold fronts mouths the word ‘swag,’ preening suggestively. Four heavily medicated twenty-somethings dissolve into a tattered couch, keeping up with a steady rotation of swigs from a Colt 45 and blowing big clouds of milky white smoke from a loose Backwood, their narrow silhouettes outlined by a woozy filter. A young DJ Khaled-lookalike in a floral shirt interlocks fingers with an offscreen comrade, his tortoiseshell frames only drawing attention to a violet colored birthmark smeared across his cheek, symbolizing that yes, “everything is purple.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

This isn’t Woodstock, this is Harlem. The 23-year-old ASAP (“Acronym Symbolizing Any Purpose”) is fast becoming the most interesting and relevant rapper to come out of New York in over a decade.

Hubris? Probably not. Noteworthy? We’ll see. There aren’t really any serious claimants to the throne of New York rap, so being considered the “most interesting and relevant” is a dubious distinction at best. In the last few years, the charts, and blogs, have been dominated by southern hip-hop – T.I., Gucci Mane, and Waka Flocka are quite removed from the ‘trap’ these days. ASAP Rocky doesn’t pick up where they left off – he skips this part of the canon, looking more toward UGK or Cash Money, and places far beyond Atlanta.

“Trilla,” a laid back, ‘drive slow’ number off his 2011 mixtape Live Love A$AP, sees the rapper merging the warring planets of DJ Screw’s syrupy and slumbering Houston with the lightning fast dexterity of Cleveland’s Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. On “Purple Swag,” he namechecks a host of Texas staples—candy paint, yellow bones, cough syrup and styrofoam cups—and a vocal sample from the once notorious Mikes Jones (WHO?) is just the cherry on top.

None of this is to say he’s bound by any one influence. Over 75% of LLA’s druggy atmospherics was conjured up by producer Clams Casino, a hip-hop romantic if such a term can be permitted. Sweeping pads, delayed whispers and strings that run dangerously close to Ibiza chill-out territory provide the backing for the usual subject matter—money, clothes and you know what else.

The recent RCA signee proves compelling mostly because of the clarity of his vision. Instead of predictably dispensing with the boom bap, ASAP Rocky is bringing New York back with the ghosts of the south by his side.

ASAP Rocky pays two visits to San Jose this March – on March 9th at Santa Clara’s Avalon Nightclub and on March 10th with Kendrick Lamar, opening for Drake at the San Jose State University Event Center.

If you’re looking to get game-day conditioning for the upcoming New Year’s Eve bacchanalia, hip-hop/R&B station 94.9’s Wild Jam live show on December 18 has proven to be an adequate annual training ground.

This year’s headliner, Canadian singer-rapper and Lil Wayne protégé Drake, is also a Wild Jam veteran. In his brief time in the spotlight, the 25-year-old has managed to score a No. 1 album on the Billboard Top 100 with Thank Me Later, which also went platinum—a hard feat in the current state of party-cup-flimsy music sales.

Since his mixtape So Far Gone was released in 2009, Drake has worked with hip-hop deities Jay-Z, Kanye West, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Timbaland, while also composing for Alicia Keys, Jamie Foxx and Dr. Dre. His latest release, Take Care, is currently ranked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200.

Also performing are B.O.B., New Boyz, Taio Cruz, J. Cole and Tyca. More info.