Last week, while Sasha Frere-Jones and the rap duo Das Racist debated whether Jay-Z’s new album is evidence that hip-hop is dead, and if so, whether it’s OK for a white guy like Frere-Jones to make that call, Minnesota’s Brother Ali was proving, one wildly heralded tour stop at a time, that such discussions are best answered in rhyme. Jay-Z may be tired, but Ali is proof that hip-hop ain’t nowhere near dead. —Mike Riggs

Read the full City Lights pick here; deets below the jump.

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This is surreal: Das Racist are sorta-kinda-but-not-really calling Sasha Frere-Jones a racist for saying what’s what about the death of rap.

Here’s Victor Vazquez, one half of Das Racist, taking SFJ to task:

SFJ is savvy enough to know that before pulling a “white man speaks authoritatively on black culture” move, he needs to first establish an acceptable precedent for his argument by locating it in the ideology of a credible black artist (in this case Nas’s 2006 album Hip Hop is Dead). But notice how SFJ then immediately undermines that credibility: while he could just say “Nas called it three years ago,” he instead claims that while Nas’s sentiment was correct, the proclamation was three years premature, as if to say “Nice try, Nas, but leave it to the professional (white, college-educated) music journalist to make sweeping statements about (black, ghetto-originated) music.”

That last line is hilarious, as both members of Das Racist went to Wesleyan University–not exactly a black or brown school.

But what would I know: I’m just another “(white) internet commenter,” who listens to too much white rap and can’t get it up when a post-colonial jerk-off session comes calling.