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XXL magazine is preparing to roll out its eighth annual “Freshman issue,” and earlier this week it opened up the polls for readers to vote for an MC to join the batch of rappers the editorial staff already selected for the cover. Regardless of my own reservations about the pomp and circumstance around the buildup to the XXL list and its eventual release, the issue remains a big milestone and goal for countless up-and-coming rappers....

When Crystal Dyer opened Gone Again Travel & Tours in a storefront in Austin in 2016, she was doing more than establishing a brick-and-mortar business. The site was just four blocks from where her grandson had been killed, and in moving her operations there she was seeking to bring some hope and opportunity to the neighborhood. Dyer’s family is from Georgia, and at her request she’d been transferred down to Atlanta to be closer to them, but after Devin’s death, she returned to Austin “with a burning desire to help my family and Austin youth,” she says on her website....

With the docudrama Selma and the documentary 13th, director Ava DuVernay has established herself as one of the foremost political filmmakers in the U.S. These movies tackle complex social issues—civil rights and the U.S. penal system, respectively—and, more importantly, they elucidate how political forces govern society. Given her interests and creative strengths, DuVernay is an odd choice to direct Disney’s new live-action adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s beloved young-adult fantasy novel A Wrinkle in Time (1962); the book, which calls on readers to imagine great stretches of time and space, has enraptured generations of children mainly because it resists logical explanation....

Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times Media This vacant lot in North Lawndale could become the site of the Obama Presidential Library. I think the best way to illuminate the latest twists and turns in the Obama Presidential Library fiasco is with an analogy to my beloved game of basketball. But as they’re heading home in triumph they hear that the powers that be—like Mayor Rahm—have put more time on the clock....

Relocating to Chicago from Connecticut five years ago gave me pause. My unease had less to do with the city than its time zone. Central Time isn’t the nation’s chronometric gold standard. That’s Eastern Time. Befitting the region’s dominance, Eastern Time goes first. It’s awake while you’re still sleeping, always ahead. And in modern work life, where business can be conducted anyplace that has a Wi-Fi connection, your time zone matters more than your physical location....

My blood pressure shot up Saturday when I read the Sun-Times story about Saint Patrick’s Day partiers, and I got particularly irked by the quote from a health professional who refused to let a pandemic get in the way of his binge drinking. The concept of social distancing isn’t all that radical in the face of uncertain calamity: we isolate ourselves today so we can meet again tomorrow. I love going to shows, movies, museums, and sharing space with an unexpected mix of friends and strangers eager to experience art with others....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, November 10, 2017. Have a great weekend, and Happy Veterans Day! Despite plea from Chance the Rapper, City Council approves $95 million police training academy The City Council voted in favor of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan for a $95 million police and fire training academy in West Garfield Park Wednesday despite a highly publicized plea from Chance the Rapper to consider other ways of spending the money, such as mental health clinics....

Another Snowy Day With Beatrix Potter and Friends With Another Snowy Day, Will Bishop and Chicago Children’s Theatre have crafted a winter puppet show extravaganza that’s dazzling, brisk at under an hour, and sweet as can be. It’s based on three of Beatrix Potter’s animal stories, handsomely woven together by three actors who can do it all: They animate Peter Rabbit and his companions (one a ginormous fish) with beauty and dexterity....

Start a two-piece instrumental bass-and-drums rock duo with a penchant for mutant masks and sounds that might’ve been forged during the opening reception of a back-alley art gallery, and watch the Lightning Bolt references roll in. Space Blood are plenty deserving of comparison to the iconic noise-rock band, but to stop at that alone would underserve their music. On 2017’s very solid Tactical Chunder (Lonely Voyage), the pair of Sam Edgin (bass, etc) and William Covert (drums, etc) are much more sci-fi theater and less hardcore-punk than their Providence-born predecessors, using synth loop after synth loop to tip a ten-gallon hat to Battles while soldering enough rhythms and deviant riffs together to hurtle their sound into the cosmos....

When meals involve chefs summoning hunks of spitting meat from towering curtains of flame, they summon all sorts of pleasurable primeval associations: the sun setting over the field where your enemies lie vanquished, your horse is tied panting to a post, and you’re wiping gore from your blades in anticipation of the spoils you’ve killed for. Second courses will appeal to more hardcore carnivores. Compressed veal sweetbreads in a pickly house giardiniera are a bit stiff, the breast implant of sweetbread dishes....

Last week Iranian-American Muslim fashion blogger Hoda Katebi posted video of a five-minute interview she’d done on January 31 with WGN News. It had been pitched to her as a segment about her fashion book, Tehran Streetstyle, but turned into an interrogation of the 23-year-old’s politics by anchors Larry Potash and Robin Baumgarten—and some of their questions and comments had Islamophobic overtones, including Baumgarten’s suggestion that Katebi didn’t “sound American.”...

Q I consider myself a straight guy—but for the last four years, I’ve been having an affair with “Connie,” a trans girl I met online. It was just casual at first, but over time we developed a deeper personal relationship but kept it hidden. At some point, I figured out she was in love with me. I love her too, but I don’t think I am “in love” with her. Several weeks ago, I went on a couple of dates with a girl I met on Match....

These days the field of classical music is crowded with prodigies whose careers seem to have been cemented before puberty, so it’s refreshing to discover that one of today’s most acclaimed younger pianists was a late bloomer. French pianist Lucas Debargue began studying music when he was 11, but his studies weren’t rigorous. By the time he was in high school he was more taken with literature than the piano, and it wasn’t until after he earned his bachelor’s degree that he pursued formal music studies....

Ukrainian Village barstaurant Pub Royale is best known for its Devon Avenue-worthy Indian food, but it also happens to serve a great burger, excellent hot chicken, a chicken tikka wrap that makes for ideal stoner food, and a decadent doughnut. So it should come as little surprise that the kitchen staff knows how to whip up a really good pizza. “We do pizza a lot,” says chef Nate Tano as he shapes the crust for one of the off-menu pies that the staff often subsist on....

Dayna Stephens’s melodic feel and versatility have made the New York-based saxophonist a key player in a wide range of ensembles. Veteran pianist Kenny Barron and inventive Australian bassist and composer Linda Oh are two of many who have relied on Stephens’s warm tone. His compositions, which comprise the bulk of his ten albums as a bandleader, convey a similar lyricism—and the new double disc Right Now! Live at the Village Vanguard, recording in 2019 during two quartet sets at the storied New York jazz club, serves as an ideal overview while also showing off his knack for self-reinvention....

On a visit to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library, I’m greeted by a screen labeled “The Trump Nickname Generator.” According to this machine, were the leader of the free world attempting to bully this particular member of the failing fake-news media, he would apparently address me as “Kooky Steve Heisler.” (Sick burn!) Squatting on a replica of the Donald’s fabled Trump Tower golden toilet, I began wishing I could flush away a filthy feeling—that the exhibit’s Viacom-approved satire lite inadvertently enshrines the propaganda of the most dangerous man in the world....

The Green Knight is at its best when it’s at its weirdest. A24, with its reputation for visual sumptuousness and bold, unsettling storytelling, seems a perfect fit for an adaptation of the 14th-century chivalric romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an Arthurian tale of magic, violence, and honor whose strangeness continues to fascinate modern readers. The film excels when it leans into this fascinating strangeness, showing us fantastical, horrific sights and teasing us with chronological fake-outs in its plot....

We should establish a new rule in our politics: When you know a candidate’s immense flaws, yet choose to endorse him or her anyway, you don’t get to piggyback when the tides turn—at least not without owning up to a major miscalculation. I only wish our vinyl record player could’ve scratched when I clicked on that headline. To be fair, the original endorsement wasn’t without clear hesitation, as the Tribune cited his administration’s achievements with a lot (and I do mean a lot) of hedging....

Nam Y. Huh/AP Which guy is really for Chicago? Like, all of Chicago. I can say without much hyperbole that there’s no colleague I esteem more than Michael Miner, the Reader‘s media critic/supplier of whimsical musings/bestower of the Golden BAT award. That didn’t stop me from sharing the feelings of many commenters on a post of his a few weeks back, “Why aren’t progressives ecstatic about the race for mayor?...

As much as I love the traditional jazz organ sound immortalized by the likes of Jimmy Smith, Baby Face Willette, Big John Patton, Jack McDuff, and Charles Earland—that funky mixture of sanctified and greasy—I’ve always preferred the music of Larry Young. In the 60s Young radicalized jazz organ, deploying a modal approach that built on the innovations of John Coltrane—his pianistic style used relatively fluid and sophisticated lines compared to the dominant sound of the time, which was more percussive and chordal....