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Vic Mensa’s “U Mad” Ever since Vic Mensa crawled up next to Kanye West during the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special in February the young Save Money rapper has been making big moves to establish himself as an artist to watch, particularly for a pop audience that generally doesn’t pay attention to too many rappers not named Kanye West. So far this year Mensa has appeared on two of West’s new singles (“Wolves” and “All Day”), roped West to guest on a single of his own called “U Mad,” and signed to Jay Z’s Roc Nation in April....

Mother-daughter relationships in cinema rarely progress beyond adolescent displays of irritation, embarrassment, and angst. The antagonists may be an overbearing mother and her disobedient daughter (Pride & Prejudice, Titanic) or a cool mom and her selfish, narcissistic teen (Amy Poehler and Rachel McAdams, respectively, in Mean Girls). Jean-Marc Vallee’s Wild—adapted from Cheryl Strayed’s nonfiction book about her struggle with grief and addiction as she trekked across the Pacific Crest Trail—is something different, a multifaceted exposition of a mother-daughter connection so extraordinary and difficult it ranks with the ones in Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen (2003)....

There’s little overlap in the Venn diagram that connects Drake and Fall Out Boy, but one definitive commonality is that they’ve both worked with Nigerian Afrobeat star Damini Ogulu, better known as Burna Boy; he contributes vocals to Fall Out Boy’s recent Mania and claims he wrote five tracks for Drake’s More Life, of which one was selected and largely reworked for the album (his lone contribution remains uncredited). Both Drake and Fall Out Boy have established track records of partnering with fast-rising acts or superstars—the former has been accused of being a culture vulture too many times to count—and it makes sense that they’d both find roads to Burna Boy, whose sense of pop is so universal it could move the entire world....

Buoyed by the interest and attention brought on by the Reader’s feature, Chicago criminal defense attorney Stuart V. Goldberg decided to finally release his autobiographical novel The Snake Charmer. But finding Goldberg proved difficult, since, as he explained to the Reader, he doesn’t use e-mail and almost never goes to his office. “It took me about a month of pestering him,” said Kight. “I left information for him at his office and even at his home....

Chicago (mostly) instrumental progressive-metal favorites Pelican produced full-lengths on a fairly regular schedule throughout the 00s, but that reliability began to break down when the decade flipped to the 10s. Four years passed between What We All Come to Need and Forever Becoming, the first album with Dallas Thomas of the Swan King stepping in for original guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec. It’s taken Pelican another six years to release their brand new Nighttime Stories, but listening to it and learning some of the history behind it provide perspective on the delay....

Joshua Lott/Getty Images Rahm Emanuel got lots of love from lakefront voters. Among the casualties in Tuesday’s runoff election—along with my short but brilliant career as a political prognosticator—was the concept of the lakefront liberal. Bolstered by youthful idealism, many of these young boomers rose up against the machine politics of Mayor Richard J. Daley. Who were sort of like the Scott Waguespacks and John Arenas of their day....

Saxophonist Tony Malaby has led countless groups over the years, often tailoring his ensembles to reflect different facets of his aesthetic such as flinty chamberlike interactions, deep dives into harmony, and rich multihorn orchestrations. In addition to his own musical endeavors, over the last couple of decades bandleaders as distinctive and accomplished as Ches Smith, Charlie Haden, Mario Pavone, Marty Ehrlich, Paul Motian, and Mark Helias have enlisted his services, and with good reason: Malaby’s striated tone and sweet-sour phrasing stand out in every context, and he can masterfully alter them to enhance any specific setting....

On June 21 middle-school math teacher Janice Wendling and her husband, Mark, a power plant engineer, were training for an upcoming charity bike ride near the southwest suburb of Morris. And yet, the Morris Herald-News reported that, earlier that month, the boy had been clocked by police doing 87 in a 55 mph zone on I-80 in Joliet. And earlier on the day of the crash, he’d been ticketed for driving 24 to 36 miles over the speed limit in nearby LaSalle County....

When current mystery novelist and former Reader theater critic Lenny Kleinfeld (aka Bury St. Edmund) first met Stuart Gordon in 1968, it was at a rehearsal for Gordon’s student production of Peter Pan at the University of Wisconsin. But instead of trafficking in J.M. Barrie‘s Victorian sentimentality, Gordon’s version reflected the upheavals that had ripped through Madison and the rest of the country in the late 60s. The company also had hit productions of David Mamet‘s Sexual Perversity in Chicago and Bleacher Bums, created by the ensemble from Joe Mantegna’s original concept about a bunch of long-suffering Cubs fans hanging out at Wrigley one afternoon, back when afternoon baseball games were the only ones in town on the north side....

Imagine a county agency that doesn’t rely on taxpayer dollars to operate. And not only that, but it also generates wealth and helps revitalize struggling neighborhoods. This may not seem like a lot, but the land bank began acquiring properties two years ago with just a $4.5 million grant and a landscape of more than 51,000 abandoned addresses throughout the county—one main result of the subprime mortgage crisis. The nine land bank properties that have thus far completed the “full cycle” from abandoned to inhabited are located in Avalon Park, Grand Crossing, South Shore, Chicago Lawn, and in suburban Hillside....

Massachusetts-based sound artist and instrument maker Victoria Shen, who performs as Evicshen, makes music that rattles your brain. Her debut LP, Hair Birth (American Dreams), is a master class in explosive cacophony driven by blaring modular synthesizers. This isn’t just unregulated noise: Shen puts thought into her songcraft, and it’s immediately apparent right from the opening track, “Current Affair,” which begins innocuously with a bit of rumbling and a tiny beep before ramping up into an unrepentant yet intricately textured roar....

Eminently engaging and candid, Too Heavy for Your Pocket, now at TimeLine and directed by Ron OJ Parson, is an intimate look at two working-class African American couples living on the fringes of the civil rights movement in Tennessee. Full of joy and humor, singing and crying, this multifaceted story opens in 1961 as Sally Mae (Jennifer Latimore) is about to graduate from college. Her husband, Tony (Cage Sebastian Pierre), and best friends Bowzie (Jalen Gilbert) and Evelyn (Ayanna Bria Bakari) have come to share the celebration....

Correction: The entry for the Magic Parlour has been emended to correctly reflect the current running time, which is 90 minutes. Drinks (wine, beer, and soda) are included in the price of admission. CHICAGO MAGIC LOUNGE The Chicago Magic Lounge takes inspiration from the historic bars specializing in close-up or tableside magic that prospered alongside the city’s trick shops in the 1940s. Magicians work the crowd from the floor, moving from table to table to perform their tricks as opposed to sweating alone beneath a spotlight onstage....

Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times Chuy Garcia pictured not too far behind Rahm Emanuel. Next month Chicago chooses a mayor who will be either a Latino former right-hand man of Chicago’s first black mayor or a Jewish former right-hand man of America’s first black president. Where’s the Irish candidate from Bridgeport, the Slav with headquarters on Archer Avenue or Milwaukee? Nowhere to be found. Ask the comrades of old who they’re voting for this time around and, in the best tradition of internecine combat, you’re met with not only disagreement but exasperated anger....

Amid Chicago’s vast pool of talent are a handful of jazz-related percussionists subject to some combination of local renown and international attention. They include Hamid Drake and Avreeayl Ra—each an integral part of the city’s most adventurous wing of astral-reaching jazz—as well as drummer Kahil El’Zabar, who’s been performing and recording since the early 70s and has counted saxophonist David Murray and violinist Billy Bang as collaborators. With his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble (just one of his enduring troupes), El’Zabar has been able to take on various sonic personas over the years....

Rent-controlled apartments offer a stability rarely seen in metropolitan areas. They sure don’t exist in Chicago. But what happens when an apartment is the only stability one has? When we meet Pops, we learn the answer is not much, outside of a safe-ish place to sleep and drink. The cast is strong, but the women in particular are limited by the script. Almanya Narula, who plays Junior’s girlfriend Lulu, leans too hard into ditzy and scatterbrained, bumbling around the apartment in revealing clothes and forgotten responsibilities....

At the risk of sounding like a lefty on the fringe, I’m starting to think that the mainstream media really doesn’t want Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic nomination—even if he’s the best chance to beat Trump. First up, “How the Insufferably Woke Help Trump” by Timothy Egan, a left-of-center populist. Think about this. Egan’s sister is on the edge of poverty, yet she won’t budge an inch from her unstated religious beliefs, even if that means voting for policies that push her over the edge....

The best perk of my job booking the Promontory is hearing brilliant DJs mix house, hip-hop, and Afrobeat while I do spreadsheets. The pandemic put that on hold, but the loss was tempered when DJs took to Instagram, Twitch, and Facebook. When I got a notice that Jay Illa, Dee Money, or Vince Adams was starting a livestream, it meant my next quarantined hour would have a world-class soundtrack. My favorite streamer was the Promontory’s favorite DJ, Matt “Kwest_On” Cannon....

Adam Gogola, 35, sings and plays guitar for Chicago punk band Blind Adam & the Federal League. He believes that music and social action can and should mix, and during the pandemic he and his bandmates have helped run a series of streaming benefit concerts and launched a mutual-aid program for their unhoused neighbors called the People’s Pizza Party. Donations can be made via Venmo at @peoplespizzaparty. I reached out to my friend Joe Tessone, who owns Mystery Street recording studio in Lincoln Park, and my friends at the Night Ministry....

Desiree Martin/Getty “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” says Stephen Hawking. In a recent Bleader post of mine touting a new travel magazine published by the Smithsonian, editor Victoria Pope made a confession. At an earlier point in her career she’d reported from Germany for the Wall Street Journal and, “I was a disaster at earnings reports, and though I tried I never got any good at it....