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Chris Crack has released five albums of no-frills trash-talking hip-hop in 2020 alone, but he’s not worried about saturating the market. When he talked to Audiomack’s Matthew Ritchie upon the release of his first album of 2021, Might Delete Later, the west-side rapper quipped, “Did Aunt Jemima make too much syrup? Can Clorox ever make too much bleach? Hell no. Because that shit works.” Crack is one of many rappers who embrace the “always in the studio” work ethic modeled by Lil Wayne during his legendary late-00s mixtape run, which has proved well-suited for the pandemic....

Ethan Hawke in Good Kill About a third of the way into Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill—currently playing at the Siskel Film Center and the Wilmette Theater—comes the saddest love scene I’ve seen in a movie in some time. An icily controlled camera pans across the bodies of Tommy Egan (Ethan Hawke), an Air Force pilot now operating fighter drones from a base outside Las Vegas, and his homemaker wife (January Jones) as they dutifully couple in their darkened bedroom....

When living in a world that seems to be perpetually on fire, sometimes you just gotta toss some dough on the flames. At least that’s the MO for Eat Free Pizza, an Instagram sweepstakes-turned-culinary phenomenon that is spreading the good, oven-fired word throughout Chicago. The Eat Free Pizza trio consists of filmmaker Billy Federighi, 38, and Green Door Tavern manager Brad Shorten, 42, the aforementioned pizzaiolos, and full-time model Cecily Rodriguez, 29, who serves as social media guru for the team....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Rohnert Park by Ceremony Traitors, “Fuck You I’m a Cop” A departing roommate left a CD of Everything Went Shit in our basement two years ago, and I just found it and have been blasting it nonstop. Great punk lyrics, or greatest punk lyrics? Thirty-­three seconds of cynical punk-rock perfection by a criminally overlooked 90s Chicago band who are unfortunately still relevant....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, May 16, 2016. Final suspect in Tyshawn Lee slaying arrested in downstate Danville The brutal murder of nine-year-old Tyshawn Lee made national news. Now the last of three suspects in the alleged gang-retaliation murder has been arrested. Kevin Edwards, 23, is in custody in downstate Danville after a traffic stop and a chase. The Chicago Police Department is working on bringing Edwards back to Chicago....

Courtesy of Stephanie Bassos Photography Fee Lion Every Monday night Beauty Bar hosts Salonathon, a variety show that’s also a great incubator for local talent. I’ve discovered a couple great musical acts just by stepping into Beauty Bar on a Monday to check out the show. Admittedly, I’ve missed one too many Salonathons in recent years, but I broke the streak this week and I’m glad I did—had I missed it I’d hate to think how long it would take me to come across the music of Justina Kairyte, aka Fee Lion....

Courtesy of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events Mahmoud Ahmed Today the city announced some of the headlining acts for this year’s World Music Festival: Chicago, which takes place September 11-22. This year’s lineup reels in the sprawl of the last few editions, which have mistaken quantity for quality. While some of the performers have been through the city pretty regularly on their own, such as the New York-based Indian brass ensemble Red Baraat and LA’s pan-Latino pop group La Santa Cecilia (playing together on 9/12), there are plenty of things worth getting excited about....

I was almost immediately hooked after I first saw a campaign ad for Chicago congressional candidate Benjamin Thomas Wolf last week, showing him smoking a joint in front of an American flag. “Legalize Cannabis. Vote March 20,” it said. He looked smart and sophisticated. I was excited and flattered to meet him. So that night I went to his office at 2048 W. Chicago, where Wolf greeted me warmly. He was tall and handsome....

Update: To help slow the spread of COVID-19, this show has been postponed until a date to be determined in the future. Tickets already purchased will be honored at that time. Emerging Chicago rapper-singer Sun Blvd, aka Sunny, approaches genre with a fluidity that should serve her well in the long run. On her 2019 EP, Link in Bio, her voice glides across pop, rap, and R&B, gassed up by skittering, sometimes blistering production that’s cut out for blasting late at night in a dim club....

Cowardly Scarecrow Theatre Company turns Chief O’Neill’s Attic Bar into the Kit Kat Klub circa 1931 in its unrestrained musical adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s stories of Nazi-era Berlin, first created by Fred Ebb and John Kander. Marc Lewallen’s and Brad Younts’s collaborative design and direction borrow freely from previous revivals (particularly Sam Mendes’s 1998 version), while reflecting our current cultural conversation on gender fluidity and sexual identity. Any historical piece set in a time of encroaching fascism can’t help but feel timely....

There was no fork in the road in 1967 when Wisconsin turkey farmer Clarence H. Hartwig, Sr. opened the Gobbler, a supper club and motel in Johnson Creek, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Chicago about halfway between Milwaukee and Madison. Interstate 94 was relatively new, and Hartwig wanted to attract attention to his space-age getaway. In its new life as a theater, the Gobbler doesn’t serve food, a fact that may disappoint people with fond memories of dining there....

On Tuesday at 7 PM Doc Films kicks off a nine-week, 13-film series devoted to Japanese director Seijun Suzuki (who passed away last year at 93) with Tokyo Drifter (1966). It’s the only film in the series with any sort of reputation in the west—the other 12 rarely screen outside of Japan. As programmer Will Carroll explains in his notes for the series, the Suzuki films that have been distributed in the west represent only a fraction of his work, which consists of more than 60 theatrical and television films....

AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia before the first runoff debate begins Monday night. “Chicago is one of America’s most segregated cities,” Anastasia Kaiser began. Kaiser, a University of Chicago senior, was framing a question for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia during Monday’s debate at the NBC Tower, the first of three in the mayoral runoff. (A few questions were taken from the audience....

Anyone who ever suggested that D.C. punk had a definitive sound likely never listened to Dischord Records’ complete catalog, let alone the Make-Up. Prior to launching the group in 1995, front man Ian Svenonius, drummer Steve Gamboa, and guitarist and organist James Canty were citizens of the Nation of Ulysses, a hurricane of a postpunk band whose members dressed like they were going to church and spouted cheeky, radical leftist ideology....

In mid-March, there were no cases of COVID-19 at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet. By April 6, some 85 people were infected, with 29 staff members among them. Two inmates have died of complications from the virus. The infection is now spreading so rapidly through the prison that it is reasonable to expect its entire population could be suffering from the novel coronavirus before April is over. At AMITA Health Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, the intensive care unit is already filled with patients from Stateville....

The weaponization of nerd culture has been a nightmare. From the outset, satirical representations like the Revenge of the Nerds series were riddled with toxic misogyny, but the modern-day real-life versions (GamerGate, Milo, 4chan) are so much worse. Under the stage name Mega Ran, rapper Raheem Jarbo defiantly counters all of that, lovingly extolling nerdy pursuits with the welcoming air of an older sibling handing down his Nintendo tips. His early Mega Man-centered work earned him a licensing deal with Capcom, and eventually a chance to meet Mega Man cocreator Keiji Inafune, who’d recently left the company to pursue other opportunities....

In late June, after three years of negotiations and with considerable relief, members of AFSCME 3506, the union representing the adult education faculty at the City Colleges of Chicago, ratified a contract that gave them modest salary increases. Roumbanis says there’s plenty of research showing that for ESL programs, more instruction time amounts to greater success. With the changes, he says, ESL courses that previously consisted of 170 to 250 hours of class time will be reduced to 96 hours....

This boy got to grow up; the Nationwide boy not so much. These thoughts are seriously deep. Don’t jump in unless you’re sure you can swim. Was it unlikely that someone would write a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton? I certainly wasn’t holding my breath. But given the existence of a new musical called “Hamilton,” is it unlikely that Alexander Hamilton is its subject? I hardly think so. Weinert-Kendt’s fallacy is so subtle I wonder if it even has a name....

During Pitchfork Music Festival over the weekend, photographer Oriana Koren turned her lens on all Union Park’s gustatory offerings. See below what fueled the fest. 

Boneflower Mead, located in northwest Indiana, has a rating of 4.7 out of a possible 5 on Untappd, a social networking app for beer aficionados that allows them to rate what they’re drinking. The rating is impressive for a fledgling meadery—but so is the fact that Boneflower, which has yet to sell a single bottle of mead, has more than 150 reviews. Schavey himself cut his teeth on craft beer well before he knew anything about mead....