Chance the Rapper’s youth empowerment charity organization, SocialWorks, hosts their annual A Night at the Museum event tonight at the Museum of Science and Industry (5700 S. DuSable Lake Shore Dr.). It’s a family-focused evening that benefits unhoused people and organizations that serve them; guests are invited to support the effort by bringing new and/or […]
Tag: Chance the Rapper
Posted inMusic
Chicago band the O’My’s make effortless, magical soul
The O’My’s sound like a band reincarnated from generations ago, as if they were dreamed up by a kid who knows too much about their grandparents’ past. How do they do it? Wisdom, skill, poise, restraint, and hazy fun pepper their music and demeanor. Their members may have been born after the “boomer” generation, but […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago rapper Supa Bwe demonstrates the unity of the personal and political on No Thanks
Supa Bwe’s ear for melody and taste for sweet hooks make him one of the city’s best rappers. Since breaking out in 2014, he’s amassed a cult audience with performances that blend screamo intensity and R&B sensuality, and he was doing it years before Soundcloud rap introduced a cohort of shouty rappers who sounded like […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The big world of Brandon Breaux
Yes, Chance the Rapper did give a big push to artist Brandon Breaux’s career when Breaux designed the covers for three of the singer’s mixtapes: 10 Day, Acid Rap, and Coloring Book. Breaux also recently landed two high-profile commissions—the February 2022 Ebony cover honoring editor André Leon Talley, and the cover of Carry On: Reflections […]
Posted inBest of Chicago
Best 184-page love letter to Chicago
Chicago is too often presented as a violent wasteland rather than a cultural wonderland, for terrible reasons and occasionally for less terrible reasons. Many fantastic facets of our city have been underdocumented not out of nefariousness, but because everyone who cared already knew. In pre-Instagram days, who had an incentive to record a sight as […]
Posted inMusic
Elton ‘L10MixedIt’ Chueng, recording engineer
Elton Chueng, 33, began his career as a professional recording engineer with an internship at Classick Studios in 2011. He’s since worked with some of the brightest stars to emerge from Chicago’s hip-hop scene in the past decade, including Saba, Noname, Smino, and Chance the Rapper. In November his contributions to Yebba’s 2021 debut, Dawn, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
What happened to YOUmedia?
The Chicago Public Library’s flagship teen program was a refuge for Black and Brown youth. Recent layoffs put that in jeopardy.
Posted inMusic
Eclectic Chicago-based jazz unit the JuJu Exchange contemplate grief on The Eternal Boombox
In a recent interview with the Yale Center for Faith & Culture’s podcast For the Life of the World, pianist Julian Reid described the way mourning informed the thematic underpinnings of The Eternal Boombox, a new self-released EP by his Chicago-based band, the JuJu Exchange. The members of this jazz combo also draw upon their […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago rappers SD and Brian Fresco combine their distinctive styles for the whimsically joyful Muddbruddas
I’m thankful for the first full-length collaboration between Chicago rappers SD and Brian Fresco, the new Muddbruddas (Empire). Its mere existence takes a wrecking ball to the tired cliche that the local scene is split into two camps, “drill” and “alternative hip-hop,” that are isolated from each other’s sound and influence. When Chief Keef kicked […]
Posted inMusic
Thirty-five moments that brought Chicago music to the world
The Year of Chicago Music has had less music in it than anybody anticipated, but we still have plenty to celebrate.
Posted inMusic
A room of Ohmme’s own
On Fantasize Your Ghost, Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham make their music a place of trust, discovery, and compassion.
Posted inMusic
Sima Cunningham’s greatest moment in Chicago music history
Ohmme cofounder Sima Cunningham spent years in a children’s choir that sang for the Dalai Lama—and she hopes to help such groups continue nurturing young musicians.
Posted inMusic
Naledge brings his rapper’s brain back to academia
Jabari “Naledge” Evans of Kidz in the Hall talks about his doctoral dissertation, incorporating hip-hop into education, the drill scene hacking the industry, and more.
Posted inMusic
Chicago producer and bandleader Peter Cottontale blends hip-hop, gospel, neosoul, and R&B on his debut album
A lot of theories about how Chicago hip-hop was supposed to operate have been shattered by the events of the past decade—the idea that only one local rapper in a generation could make it big, for instance, or the insistence that the city had a singular sound. While drill became the dominant underground wave, proving […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago rapper G Herbo gives his reflective raps new shapes on PTSD
I wish the right-wing miscreants in the federal government were as dependable as Chicago rapper G Herbo. For close to a decade, he’s released albums and mixtapes of rapid-fire drill with reassuring frequency, and even his most run-of-the-mill offerings benefit from his pragmatic empathy and lucid descriptions—he brings a distinctive emotional gravity to his detailed […]