In 2013 LA collective cum indie label Soulection launched a digital white-label series, dropping an EP by local beat maker Monte Booker in October 2015. For that EP’s closer “Baby” Booker recruited Chicago R&B singer Ravyn Lenae—a fellow member of local collective Zero Fatigue, along with ascending rapper Smino—whose luminescent vocals playfully swerve around fluttering Spanish guitars. Roughly a year later Soulection, which also produces events and runs a clothing company, interviewed Lenae for its radio show, and during the program she talked about finding the right balance between her budding career and her education at Chicago High School for the Arts: “It’s superhard juggling that with lack of sleep and regular personal issues—and then music issues....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

Q: I’m a straight guy, married for 16 years, kids in school. My wife cannot find a way to be intimate with me. We’ve had therapy individually and together. I nearly divorced her, but we decided to stay together—we do love each other, and the economics and child-rearing favor it. After I asked for a divorce, she fucked the shit out of me for the first time in ten years. That was the last time she fucked me....

Later this week, the recently revived Northwest Chicago Film Society presents a screening of Anthony Mann’s Bend of the River, one of the director’s numerous collaborations with actor James Stewart. Mann and Stewart made different kinds of movies together, but it’s the westerns that endure. Psychologically knotty and unconventionally violent, the films’ revisionist nature reshaped the traditional western landscape by acting as allegories of masculinity under fire during the Cold War....

There were two things everyone asked me when I was first diagnosed with cancer: “Will you lose your hair?” and “Can you get medicinal marijuana?” The short answer to both of those questions was “yes.” But when it comes to the issue of medical cannabis in Illinois, nothing is as simple as a one-word answer. The application alone requires three forms of ID, a current photo, fingerprints, a background check, a five-page physician approval form, and a $150 fee ($100 for the application, $50 for the fingerprints)....

The first total solar eclipse to cross the U.S. in 99 years will occur in the early afternoon of Monday, August 21. While Chicago is not in the “path of totality”—you’ll have to head to downstate Carbondale, Illinois, to see the spectacle in its full glory—the Adler Planetarium says Monday will be the closest the city has been to a total eclipse in 92 years. In Chicago, the moon (that jerk!...

AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh White Sox shortstop Alexei Ramirez flies around the bases after hitting the game-winning homer yesterday at the Cell. Any team in baseball would love to have an eighth-place hitter like the one playing for the White Sox. Shortstop Alexei Ramirez leads the American League in hitting—by 35 points. He’s batting .420. The Sox have played 13 games, and Ramirez has hit safely in all of them....

You pundits who want to suck their thumbs and say something deep about Derrick Rose—have at it. The bar’s been set so low that unless you attack your keyboard with a backhoe nothing you have to say can go lower. There are reporters who write trash because they can’t help themselves. Their readers expect it and at home there are mouths to feed. Silverman makes the novel claim that not being able to help himself is another measure of this horrific story....

Michael Gebert Kurosawa saba “megamaki” at Momotaro Jeff Ramsey, the head sushi chef at Momotaro, which opens tonight, waxed poetic about the fish from Japanese waters for a small audience of food journalists. “The waters of Japan are especially nutrient rich,” he said. “Japan has all these crinkly little coves along the edge, it has more coastline than America. So there are all these little inlets where the fish feed....

The latest iteration of the France-Chicago music exchange known as the Bridge rates as one of the most beguiling and interesting combinations yet. All four of the musicians involved have mercurial tendencies, working within the jazz and improvised-music traditions while also pushing well outside of both. Included in the Chicago cast is bassist Jason Roebke, one of the most skilled and forceful practitioners in the local jazz scene and one who’s explored more experimental contexts—his old group Combine used analog synthesizer splatter to provide an abstract contrast to his structural conceits....

A bright green fireball fell from the sky into Lake Michigan early Monday morning. Such events were not unknown in ancient mythologies when the gods were displeased, but scientists at the Field Museum and the American Meteor Society have assured us that it was just a meteorite breaking into pieces as it entered the earth’s atmosphere. The technical term for it, though, is a “sporadic fireball,” which is still pretty awesome....

Me5000/Wikimedia Commons The True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, has made a screening venue of the ballroom of the historic Tiger Hotel. Due to technical difficulties, the screening of Kidlat Tahimik’s I Am Furious Yellow (which I wrote about last Wednesday) did not happen this weekend at the Prak-Sis New Media Art Festival. I was disappointed by the cancelation, though I was pleased to learn this morning that Blake Heo, one of the festival organizers, hopes to schedule a makeup screening....

ARTIST: Joe Schorgl SHOW: Giuda, the Sueves, and Mama at 1st Ward on Wed 5/31

As you’ve no doubt heard, Donald Trump wants to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. Ironically, Trump is cutting the arts because it’s great theater. It’s such an easy target: low-hanging fruit that’s also high visibility. The artists know how to put up a fuss that’ll get noticed, and he’ll look like a hero to that supposed rust-and-Bible-belt antiart constituency. A statement will have been made about what America does and doesn’t value....

When it comes to booking women, Pitchfork has just broken its own record. This year it’s one of only three major summer festivals to assemble a lineup where at least half the acts include women—a feat not one accomplished in 2017. The women at Pitchfork include several under age 25, among them Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, Nilüfer Yanya, and Ravyn Lenae. But don’t dismiss them because they’re young, or assume that their presence is a side effect of some sort of gender-based quota system....

CLAUDE-ALINENAZAIRE Dee Alexander Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

Stop Calling Me Honey Bunny Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

Chicago hip-hop fans used to speak strictly in terms of rappers, beat makers, and DJs, but over the past few years we’ve also started celebrating saxophonists, guitarists, band leaders, backing vocalists, and poets. As a listener, I get a lot of joy surveying this sprawling world and finding musicians who enhance my understanding of what Chicago hip-hop—and, by extension, Chicago music—is and where it can go. And this fall I’m particularly looking forward to new releases from rapper Roy Kinsey and singer-songwriter Tasha Viets-VanLear, who performs under her first name....

In July, Sen Morimoto quit his job as a barback at Big Star with no plans to look for other work—the 24-year-old singer, rapper, producer, and multi-instrumentalist had decided to try supporting himself as a musician. Since moving to Chicago in 2014, he’d been content to hold down restaurant jobs and take opportunities to work on his music—an adventurous blend of hip-hop, jazz, prog rock, and pop—wherever he could find them....