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At this year’s “Black Creativity Juried Art Exhibition,” two works by artist Lexus Giles—titled She’s Healed and She is Me—invite visitors into the gallery that houses much of the exhibition’s sculptures. A 2018 Artnet analysis showed that although the exhibitions focusing on Black artists has jumped to record-breaking numbers in recent years, Black art accounted for less than 3 percent of museums’ acquisitions—in some museums, it was less than 1 percent....

Tornado warning. Ooh, I’m sooo scared. It did not sink in right away that a tornado had just occurred. It wasn’t until the following morning that it was confirmed by the National Weather Service. The destruction was clear: 50-foot trees laid down across the streets; root systems unearthed and buckling the sidewalks; flattened cars; the grey metal pole of the laundromat’s sign on the corner still attached but blown parallel to the ground....

A secondary rainbow is a faint visual echo that appears outside a rainbow when light bends twice while passing through raindrops. Composer, violist, and occasional vocalist Catherine Lamb uses careful calculation and subtle dynamics to evoke correspondingly liminal sonic experiences. Born in Olympia, Washington, and based in Berlin, she’s developed a musical approach that combines elements drawn from her formal studies with composers such as James Tenney and Michael Pisaro at CalArts and Bard with lessons she’s learned through one-on-one engagements with late filmmaker Mani Kaul (also a musician in the Indian classical tradition of dhrupad) and French electronic composer Éliane Radigue....

A couple days ago local R&B group Jody dropped a sultry, incandescent EP called Oasis. It’s the first proper follow-up to the band’s great debut EP, 2013’s Magique, though Jody didn’t stop releasing music in the interim. In fact, two of the best songs on Oasis, the ghostly title track and the silken, slowly rippling “M.I.A. (Move it Along),” have been floating around online for a year. On Oasis those tracks gel together with the five other songs for a seductive whole that ends too soon—by the time the great final track, “Mirage,” comes to a close you’ll probably want to listen to the EP a couple more times....

Beginning in 2014, Chicago rapper-singer Supa Bwe made his name threading together powerful rapping, forcefully melodic singing influenced by third-wave emo, and intensely vulnerable lyrics that address depression with considerable weight. His work inadvertently blazed a trail for every SoundCloud rapper with more face tattoos than original ideas who’s gotten big over the past few years. Supa could easily capitalize on that trend by finessing his early sound into a formula and following that, but he’s more interested in exploring different stylistic ideas....

Bezos got things going in early September, when he announced he’d build a second headquarters, dubbed HQ2, for the Seattle-based behemoth online retailer in the North American location that offered him the best deal. Since then, more than 200 cities or states have responded, lured in part by the promise of some 50,000 relatively high-paying jobs. As it is, Rahm and Rauner have already offered Bezos about $1.32 billion in Economic Development for a Growing Economy (EDGE) tax credits....

Over the past couple years, drummer Chad Taylor has been on fire, contributing to some of my favorite recordings, among them albums by trumpeter Jaimie Branch, bassist Eric Revis, and pianist Mara Rosenbloom. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to jazz. In the late 90s Taylor cofounded the Chicago Underground franchise with cornetist Rob Mazurek, and since he left his hometown in 2001 his activity and versatility have only expanded....

As the campaigns make their final appeals, I’ve been trying to decide which of Mayor Emanuel’s commercials and mailings is the most misleading piece of propaganda of the city election season. The caucus is that band of eight aldermen—including Scott Waguespack (32nd) and John Arena (45th)—who occasionally vote against some of the mayor’s more repellent legislation. But eight aldermen are not enough to block mayoral initiatives, no matter how unsavory they may be....

Since 2003, Eric Isaacson has run Mississippi Records, a shop in Portland, Oregon, that launched a wonderfully eclectic and idiosyncratic label in 2004; late last year, he turned over the label half of the operation to filmmaker Cyrus Moussavi and experimental musician Gordon Ashworth. “We agreed to do it if we could leave Portland,” Moussavi says. And so Mississippi Records is moving to Chicago—though it doesn’t yet have a physical HQ, and it’s been on pause since mid-December while Moussavi and Ashworth transport its stock via a monthlong tour that ends at the Co-Prosperity Sphere on Friday, February 1....

Q: I’m a cis male in my late 20s. I’ve recently become consumed by a specific fantasy I fear is unattainable, a fear that has been made worse by several failed attempts to research it. Into cuddling and general affection, some make-out sessions, and occasional hand jobs and blow jobs—but no penetrative sex or anal play. Now for my questions: Does anyone like this actually exist? Is there a name for the fetish I’m describing?...

I always come back to classic soul, Motown, and R&B when I need to feel grounded, and lately life has pushed me deep into my collection of 60s party hits—which includes the 1966 single “In the Basement” by soul singers Etta James and Sugar Pie DeSanto. James earned her share of fame with hits such as “I’d Rather Go Blind” and her most recognizable tune, a rendition of “At Last” (first dance for the Obamas in 2008, remember?...

Michael Gebert Tim Cottini in the backyard that will soon be a steak house’s patio It used to be that every neighborhood had its share of regular-guy steak houses—supper-club-type places where you could take your lady out to get cocktails and a pretty good steak in a grown-up atmosphere, without going downtown and spending the down payment on a new Buick. In Lincoln Square that place was Jury’s, for instance....

S hortly after his inauguration, President Donald Trump issued an executive order blocking entry to the United States by citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries in what was presented as an effort to prevent terrorist attacks. The measure was followed by protests, challenges from several state courts—and crackdowns from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Even as the debate over the travel ban continued to work its way through the court system—the Supreme Court heard arguments last week and is expected to hand down a final ruling in June—ICE agents rounded up and deported immigrants, notably 199 Iraqis and 91 Somalis....

In 2012, I wrote about a late-1970s cassette recording of a dying carousel in Saint Paul, Minnesota, as part of the Reader‘s In Rotation series. It had been posted by a blog called Tape Findings in 2009, but in 2012 it wasn’t online in any form that I could embed on our website. I recently discovered that this situation had changed: in 2017, somebody named Shogun_Okami uploaded the tape to YouTube....

The YouTube video of Pussy Riot’s brief provocation—about 48 seconds—at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior on February 21, 2012, makes their actions seem almost anodyne by comparison to, say, Act Up’s protests at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City 30 years ago. Yet the price paid by the women arrested that day, two of whom served 21 months in prison for “hooliganism,” resonates through Barbara Hammond’s kaleidoscopic and chaotic We Are Pussy Riot (or) Everything Is P....

When west-side rapper El Hitta dropped his breakthrough single, “Aww Yea,” in July, he put it out under his original name: El Hitla. “Everybody wanna name theyself off the bad guys,” he told the TRiiBE in December. “Me not knowing what it was, I, you know, end up picking the name Hitler.” After doing more research on the genocidal demagogue and scourge of 20th-century Europe, the rapper changed his stage name to Hitta....

The arts section, no less, of a recent New York Times carried two stories on American racism at its roots. There was an admiring review of a new play, Underground Railroad Game, a kind of comedy whose “smug and familiar humor,” wrote critic Ben Brantley, “winds up exploding in our face, like a poisonous prank cigar.” Underground does, at least, have one foot in the present: two flirting students—one white, one black—who try to explore America’s slave past and fall into an abyss....

Q: I’m an 18-year-old cis hetero girl from Australia and I’ve been listening to your podcast and reading your column since I was 13. Thanks to you I’m pretty open-minded about my sexuality and body. Having said that, I do have a few questions. I started watching porn from a youngish age with no real shame attached but I have some concerns. Care to weigh in? —Concerned About Porn Preferences...

What was billed as a “major address” on the issue of gun violence instead resembled a farce. Most of the mayor’s speech was dedicated to describing the additional resources he plans to give police. He touted body cameras and Tasers for every officer, and called for tougher gun laws and sentences for repeat gun offenders. He also made a pitch for the mentorship of at-risk youth as the crux of a crime prevention strategy, and offered a very brief note about investing in job-training programs....

Bill Callahan’s recent album Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest (Drag City) contains the singer-songwriter’s first set of new songs in six years. That’s a long time for a guy who made 15 LPs in the 23 years between Sewn to the Sea, his first full-length as Smog, and Dream River, which came out in 2013 (followed by a dub companion, Have Fun With God, the next year). But during a series of major life events—marriage, the birth of a son, the loss of a parent—Callahan experienced a long dry stretch....