“You gave me language as a gift,” Sage Francis announces on “Thank You,” from his upcoming album, Copper Gone. “I turned it against you/I was stupid, I was young/I was hanging by my Judas tongue,” he confesses, turning his youthful arrogance into a belated form of redemption as he gives credit to an unnamed mentor. The Rhode Island rapper, who also runs hip-hop label Strange Famous Records, has always had mixed feelings about society and fame, as reflected in his three ambivalently titled albums for Epitaph Records: A Healthy Distrust, Human the Death Dance and Li(f)e. But even the Sage one isn't beyond the need for guidance: “I was ignorant, passed out on the spacebar. … I'm an idiot, self-deprecating author. … You edited the words from the grave and beyond.”

Wed., June 18, 8 p.m., 2014
(Expired: 06/18/14)

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