By DCist Contributor Valerie Paschall By the time Northern State came into existence in 2000, the term “girl power” had become a sort of joke, referring to acts that spent as much time undercutting this “power” of theirs with shameless self-promotion and dubious costume choices as they did with cultivating any actual vocal or lyrical talent. As such, using this term (or any ambiguous feminist term) to describe these three ladies from Brooklyn seems…

Monday >> You can be fairly certain that when a rapper takes a stagename that is a play on Hawthorne, you’re going to be dealing with a hip-hop experience concerned with more than just the next glass of Courvoiseir. Hesta Prynn and her cohorts in Northern State take the Black Cat backstage with Bitch and the Exciting Conclusion, the new project from half of the fantastic Bitch & Animal. This ought to be a mainstage…