Compton rapper Roddy Ricch dropped his debut mixtape, Feed tha Streets, in November 2017, and he’s since earned a spot in hip-hop’s top tier. In the year leading up to his first full-length album, December’s Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial (Atlantic), Ricch lent his gritty, soulful vocals to DJ Mustard’s Caribbean-flecked smash “Ballin’” and Nipsey Hussle’s bittersweet, reflective “Racks in the Middle,” which just won a Grammy for Best Rap Performance....

Bassist Darryl Jones has the kind of powerhouse resumé that suggests he wouldn’t need the challenge of standing on a small club stage to play his own songs. Growing up in Chatham, Jones studied music at Chicago Vocational High School, where he learned everything from Rimsky-Korsakov to Michael Jackson. At age 21, he won an audition with Miles Davis and landed a gig touring with the jazz great throughout the mid-1980s....

About halfway through the approximately three-hour-long epic Avengers: Endgame, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) sums up the movie with a quick aside: “The only thing that is permanent in life is impermanence.” At first it seems like a throwaway line, tucked into a comedic ramble about Thor’s ex-girlfriend, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). But no second of a meticulously sculpted cinematic event like Endgame forsakes meaning. On the contrary, a film that should feel overlong and overstuffed rings purposeful, weighted with existential truth even as it flashes before our eyes....

Whenever folks discuss the great guitarists of the British Invasion, names such as Eric Clapton, George Harrison, and Pete Townshend reliably come up, but one rocker always seems to get short shrift: Dave Davies of the Kinks. I’d argue that Davies is the most influential of them all. The Kinks tunes “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night” were the garage-band shots heard around the world—the simple but urgent riffage and lustful, sweaty teenage lyrics were clumsily copied in a million basements by 60s teens while the Beatles were still making jangly pop music and singing about holding hands....

After the uproar around Bill Burr‘s recent SNL monologue taking white women to task for their role in upholding institutional racism, a YouTube clip of Burr complaining about Michelle Obama in particular and First Ladies in general made the social media rounds. “When did First Ladies start acting like they got elected?” bellowed Burr. “To be the First Lady, that’s not a fucking job. Just standing there smiling and waving.”Maybe Burr should carve out about 100 minutes to watch the Neo-Futurists’ latest, 45 Plays for America’s First Ladies, to get a wider perspective on what the role entails....

If you’re going to spend an entire summer day in the sun at a music festival, why not pick the one that takes place right on the lakefront? The Oakwood Beach location of Mamby on the Beach sure is inviting, but scenic surroundings aside, the two-day music event boasts one of the ballsiest cross-genre bills of any midsize fest in town. “I look at it as a human mixtape,” Mamby talent buyer Matt Rucins recently told me, and the quality of the bill reflects that aesthetic....

The revamped Logan Square arts festival gets underway this weekend. The former Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival, which had a landlord censorship issue last year, has changed its name and location and is up this weekend as the “inaugural Logan Square Arts Festival.” Festival hours are 5 PM to 10 PM tonight and noon to 10 PM Saturday and Sunday; suggested gate donation is $5.

To my mind, the last forward-thinking movements in psychedelic pop music occurred in the 80s and the early 90s. In the UK, bands in the shoegaze/dream-pop scene layered fuzzy, noisy wall-of-sound guitars with breathy, androgynous vocals, while in the U.S,. bands associated with the Paisley Underground took influence from 60s groups such as the Byrds and the Beau Brummels—often filtered through the intensity of punk. Around the same time, a similar love of pure yet avant-garde 60s pop became evident among a crop of musicians in New Zealand who favored the stripped-down DIY efficiency of the Velvet Underground....

One summer night during the mid-1980s, Mayor Harold Washington visited the Taste Entertainment Center in the heart of Englewood. He walked into the kitchen, put on an apron, and offered some culinary advice to the staff. Even more remarkable is that Taste has survived the ups and downs that have hit Englewood for four decades. On Saturday, May 5, a Taste reunion featuring house music legend Farley “Jackmaster” Funk and former staff could serve as an introduction to some and a reminder for the old heads....

Zach Klein/Wikimedia Commons The comedian in his younger years (2005, to be precise) Patton Oswalt’s second memoir, his follow-up to 2011’s Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, is his recounting of the period between 1995 and ’99, when he was an up-and-coming comic in Los Angeles who went to the movies almost every night. Enabled by living in close proximity to the legendary New Beverly Cinema, he set out to see as many movies as possible that he found listed in The Film Noir Encyclopedia, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, and Danny Peary’s three volumes of Cult Movies....

Courtesy of Hometapes Pattern Is Movement Pattern Is Movement have long held a place in my heart (ever since my friend Dan Levine introduced me to the Philadelphia indie-rock band seven years ago) and tomorrow night they return to Chicago one last time during a monthlong farewell tour. I remember Pattern Is Movement were called “lumberjack rock” when I first heard them, a term that doesn’t really describe the tone of their delicate, minimal songs as much as it focuses on what the band members look like: singer-keyboardist Andrew Thiboldeaux and drummer Chris Ward have an affinity for woodsman-type flannel, sport beards that suggest they spend a lot of time in a forest (though Thiboldeaux shed his for the above press photo), and look like they could make a living chopping down trees....

Polish death-metal legends Vader have seen many major world changes in their 35 years as a band, some of which have directly impacted their career. Following the fall of the Iron Curtain in the early 90s, for instance, they became the first Polish death-metal band to sign a record contract with a Western label. They’ve since been reliably prolific, bringing a sense of martial discipline to every track they lay down....

Singer-songwriters Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have been playing folk-rock guitar and singing harmonies together since the early 80s, when they were high school students in Decatur, Georgia. In 1985, they began performing as the Indigo Girls, and their earnest lyrics and dual guitars earned them a loyal and dedicated fan base that grew exponentially after the 1988 release of their self-titled second album (which was also their major-label debut). An Indigo Girls concert can feel like a fun night at summer camp: nearly everyone sings along....

The Chicago schoolkids who make up Mariachi Herencia de Mexico had a hell of a summer in 2017. The band, whose members range in age from 11 to 18, had formed in March 2016, and last May they released their first record, Nuestra Herencia. It debuted at number two on iTunes’ U.S. Latino Albums chart, and in July the group appeared with crossover Mexican-American singer Lila Downs at Ravinia. In August they performed at the prestigious Joe’s Pub in New York, then flew to Guadalajara, Mexico, to play a major mariachi festival....

Al Podgorski Wait, so, how many students have gone missing from CPS, Barbara Byrd-Bennett? Over the last few days, I’ve been watching Mayor Rahm work his magic in the mayoral debates, where he answers questions however he wants, regardless of what he’s been asked. “I cut a deal with Alderman Burke in which I let him keep his police bodyguars and his finance committee chairmanship and pretty much anything else he wants, including, apparently, around-the-clock snow removal service....

UPDATE Sunday, March 15: this event has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. Dan Clancy’s four-person play about two couples living a middling life in a middle-class suburb, Middletown, is the kind of middlebrow play you go to when you don’t want your emotions stirred up or your assumptions about life challenged, and you don’t want to work very hard to figure out what it all means. It is 90 minutes worth of Kodak moments from the lives of Clancy’s characters—from first dates, first meetings, and first days of school, through sudden departures, final partings, last moments—all presented in series of reminiscences that skim along the surface of life, inspiring sweet smiles, lighthearted chuckles, and occasional glances at the watch to see how soon this all ends....

Seeking: marriage-minded man Occupation: CEO of TransTech Social Enterprises What do you do when you’re not working? Her friend says: “Angelica is stunningly gorgeous (a former model), recently launched her own business, and was MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry’s first ‘Foot Soldier of the Week’ for 2015.” Writing and playing music. Smoker? No. Pets? Dog lover! I’m coparenting a dog with current roommate. Dietary restrictions? None—I eat everything. Children? No, but open to them....

The queer British filmmaker Derek Jarman, who died of an AIDS-related illness in 1994, is one of the artists featured by the streaming channel FilmStruck during Pride Month. We spotlight five of his eclectic and highly original films. WittgensteinThis Brechtian biopic (1993) by the English filmmaker Derek Jarman about Ludwig Wittgenstein encompasses everything from the philosopher’s pampered childhood to his friendships with Bertrand Russell and John Maynard Keynes and his relationships with rough young men....