Gig Alert: John Forté

John Forte
“Focus Up”
Playing at: City Winery (155 Varick St., Soho)
Get: Tickets | Directions

In the weeks following Barack Obama's presidential election in November 2008, a stranger-than-fiction story briefly lit up the newswires: then President Bush employed his waning presidential powers to commute the sentence of rapper/producer John Forté, the dreadlocked former Fugee who was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison after being caught with $1.4 million in liquid cocaine.

Now, Forté is making up for lost time. Aside from furiously recording music, he’s working on a memoir and documentary about his tumultuous personal history. In “Focus Up,” Forte gets biographical, charting the rise and fall of a young artist in a soulful, literary style that will be familiar to fans of late-'90s conscious hip-hop.