Halloween night, Houston gets a visit from two icons of '90s rap who have probably seen their share of drama for one lifetime. After debuting so precociously with his riveting account of life in New York's Queensbridge housing projects, Illmatic — he was just 20 when the album was released in April 1994 — Nas gradually evolved into one of rap's elder statesmen alongside Jay-Z, but lays out his painful divorce from R&B singer Kelis in unusually candid, vindictive fashion on July's Life Is Good. (His fruitful 2010 collaboration with reggae scion Damien Marley, Distant Relatives, is perhaps a more pleasant recent memory.) Erstwhile Fugee Lauryn Hill, meanwhile, wrote the book on "erratic" after her landmark 1998 LP The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill — she has yet to release another album to follow 2002's MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 — but after a long hiatus to raise her young family, has returned to the concert circuit to mostly strong reviews.
Wed., Oct. 31, 8 p.m., 2012