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Jade Jackson reveals her relative inexperience in songwriting when she opens her debut album, Gilded (Anti), with the couplet, “I grew up my father’s daughter / He said, ‘Don’t take no shit from no one.” The 25-year-old artist may well be relaying a genuine experience for all I know, but those banal lines set the tone for an album by someone who admires country music but isn’t yet able to add anything to the tradition....

The annual “Freshman Class” issue of XXL magazine aims to predict hip-hop’s future stars, but it increasingly spotlights artists who are already hot. The 11 rappers in the 2019 class, which was announced in June, include the two most sought-after MCs of the summer: Houston’s Megan Thee Stallion and Charlotte’s DaBaby. In the XXL Freshman Class freestyle cypher that the two rappers shared with YK Osiris and Lil Mosey, uploaded to YouTube at the end of July, they both scorch every second they’re on the mike; DaBaby, who claims about half the video’s four minutes and 30 seconds, tears through the dreamy beat like Wile E....

If Big Thief had only given us May’s U.F.O.F., they already would’ve been one of the most compelling indie bands of 2019. Then in August, the folk-leaning Brooklyn four-piece dropped the feverish, slow-boiling rocker “Not” and announced the release of another full-length, the brand-new Two Hands (4AD). The albums feel tethered together, as if they’re responding to each other. Big Thief recorded U.F.O.F. just outside Seattle with engineer Dom Monks and producer Andrew Sarlo, wrestling together stripped-down melodies that alternate between fragile and austere; front woman Adrianne Lenker balances the two on the otherworldly “From” when her trembling voice breaks into a growl....

In a futile attempt to justify the unjustifiable, Trumpsters have resorted to grave robbery. In his June 11 column, Kass argues that Black Lives Matter activists who take a knee to protest police violence against Black people are members of a cult threatening to destroy America. “I’m no theologian, but my ancient Greek Orthodox Christian faith teaches us to condemn racism and support the oppressed. We’re judged on sins we commit as individuals....

Courtesy NFL The Draft Town fest in Grant Park features areas where fans can watch the draft for free. Back on December 2, 1963, the last time the NFL draft was held in Chicago, there was no television coverage. Nothing on the radio either. And there certainly wasn’t a fan festival like the Draft Town event happening in Grant Park this week, which takes place while the league’s teams make their selections across the street at the Auditorium Theatre....

It was a powerful moment this morning when a mostly African-American crowd gathered in the soaring atrium of the Harold Washington Library Center’s Winter Garden to honor Chicagoan Ida B. Wells, the investigative journalist, anti-lynching activist, and suffragist for whom Congress Parkway, the southern border of the Loop, was officially renamed today. It’s the first-ever downtown Chicago roadway to be named for an African-American woman. Also in attendance at the ceremony were South Loop alderman Sophia King and downtown alderman Brendan Reilly, who proposed the ordinance for the street name change; Illinois lieutenant governor Juliana Stratton; Cook County Board president and mayoral hopeful Toni Preckwinkle; and attorney Chaz Ebert, widow of film critic Roger Ebert....

In August, a couple days before Brooklyn indie-rock trio Peaer released their second album, A Healthy Earth (Tiny Engines), the Fader ran an interview with the band where drummer Jeremy Kinney sketched out their ambitions. “One of my goals in writing all of these songs was to achieve a level of scale,” he said. “To not just talk about interpersonal relationships, but also about the world at large at various levels: the government, the environment, or culture....

Before Ta-Nehisi Coates laid out “The Case for Reparations” in the Atlantic in 2014, Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 classic A Raisin in the Sun clearly showed the effects of racism on Black Americans seeking better living conditions—a problem we’ve yet to fully address. The Younger family—so cramped for space in their roach-infested apartment that son Travis has to sleep on the living room couch—hopes to buy a better piece of the American pie, thanks to a life insurance payout from their late husband and father....

Watching director Jonathan Berry’s compelling, carefully shaded production of Simon Stephens’s Birdland, which charts the predictable dissolution of coddled, self-absorbed rock superstar Paul, is like driving to Milwaukee on surface streets. It takes twice as long as necessary to get somewhere you’ve known you’ll end up the entire way, yet the unfamiliar sights along the route make you wish highways had never been invented. Like fellow British writer Mike Leigh, Stephens privileges meticulously articulated anecdotes over eventful plotting....

T here are some people who find traveling for the purpose of visiting cemeteries ghoulish. These individuals, however, should realize that a century or so ago, perfectly normal people like them used to hang out in cemeteries. This was because there was a paucity of public parks, places where city folks could take a picnic and enjoy being someplace cool and green and quiet. They were untroubled by the fact that they were surrounded by dead people, so much so that they left their trash on the ground and tore up the lawns....

This Saturday, August 29, is Independent Bookstore Day and there’s not a better time for us to embrace small business, especially those that try to bring us entertainment, educate us, and make us better citizens. Lofty goals, ya know (but let me tell you that you can totally just go to places like my beloved Quimby’s and purchase Marcie and Peppermint Patty mini-comics if that’s your thing, and you’ll still be supporting small business)....

Ne-Hi formed in 2013 and subsequently became one of the most revered Chicago indie-rock bands of the decade. The four-piece called it quits in May 2019, but I imagine their reputation will only keep growing—partly because all four members continue to play in remarkable groups. Jason Balla always juggled a few projects while in Ne-Hi, chief among them postpunk trio Dehd, which he’s helped lead since 2016; their recent Flower of Devotion is one of the most celebrated indie albums of 2020....

On its website, Jefferson Park’s tiny the Gift Theatre states as one of its founding beliefs that “a play never closes until everyone who saw it stops thinking about it.” Which means maybe I should let the ensemble know that, thanks to me, their powerhouse 2018 production of Hamlet—directed by Monty Cole, with Daniel Kyri heading a mostly Black cast—is still running. How much do I owe them? Oh, that’s right—in their view, art is a sacred gift, from actor to audience....

During his first expedition to Africa for the Field Museum, in 1896, Carl Akeley, who would later be recognized as the father of modern taxidermy, collected the skins of more than 500 animals including a lion; impressed a sultan with his taxidermy skill; nearly died of dehydration in the Somali desert until a passing caravan revived him with a skin of rancid goat’s milk; and strangled a leopard with his bare hands after the cat pounced, knocked his gun from his hands, and grabbed his arm with its teeth....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. The Kind practiced on South Boulevard in Oak Park, sharing a space with legendary power-pop group Pezband. They bought a pink-painted mail truck at a local auction for $50 and started playing every gig possible: pool parties in Rolling Meadows, dances on downstate air force bases, suburban high school proms....

How do you solve a problem like Melissa Lorraine? I thought she was something special the first time I saw her onstage, just under five years ago, in the little upstairs space at the Royal George Theatre. She was performing Juliet, an evening-length monologue by Romanian writer András Visky. Based on his mother’s sufferings under communist rule, Juliet was harrowing. And Lorraine was vivid. By the time I saw her in another Visky work, Porn—also about Romanian despotism—I was ready to declare that “I’d sit through anything she chose to perform....

Jack Gillespie has what any teen or 20-something could only dream of: a lifetime supply of boba tea. Now, restaurants no longer need a Michelin star to see success. The key ingredient for a line out the door is a viral video. As new businesses pop up, owners are gravitating toward the “TikTok model,” intentionally creating unique storefronts and cutesy foods to garner attention online. But as whimsical cafes become more common, some have taken to TikTok to highlight the restaurants that aren’t as video-worthy—from mom-and-pop diners without social media pages to hidden family-owned stores lacking adequate advertising....

But entering this next phase of young adulthood means first coming to terms with the fact that your last phase is ending. Jeremiah, who will graduate from high school in 2021, talks about having to “find new normals” after high school, detailing how senior traditions represent an end to the normalcy they’ve always known. Traditions such as graduations, luncheons, prom, and trunk parties are chances to celebrate accomplishments and prepare for a new journey....

Creative Control, opening this week at Music Box, tells the story of a New York advertising executive whose life begins to unravel after he agrees to test-drive a pair of “augmented reality” glasses his company is promoting. Also this week, we’ve got new reviews of: The Automatic Hate, a mystery set in motion when a man meets his long-lost (and gorgeous) cousin; The Bronze, a comedy starring Melissa Rauch (The Big Bang Theory) as a bitter ex-Olympian; The Cool World, Shirley Clarke’s gritty 1964 drama about young thugs in Harlem; The Divergent Series: Allegiant, the third and (hooray) last installment in the young-adult SF franchise; Eye in the Sky, a timely chamber drama about U....

On a recent Sunday afternoon, a crowd only slightly smaller than the one a few miles west at the Pitchfork Music Festival formed around the Bean in Millennium Park for a Pokémon Go meet-up that made the days of Pac-Man fever resemble a mild cough. More than 9,000 people RSVP’d to the event’s Facebook invite, but on-the-ground estimates ranged from 3,000 to 5,000 fans, from teens to the middle-aged, some clad in bright yellow Pikachu hats and furry Pokémon-themed costumes....