Andrea Bauer Kembe X (left) with Genesis Denton and Alex Wiley back in 2012 I suppose I could spend the entire day dissecting the video for Taylor Swift’s brand new single, “Shake It Off,” but in lieu of getting frustrated over calculated cultural carpetbagging I prefer to clear my head and listen to new music from South Holland rapper and Village collective member Kembe X. The 19-year-old first caught my ear with 2011’s Self Rule, a charming debut I had on repeat for months largely because of Kembe’s down-to-earth personality, soothing vocals, and introspective lyrics....

Don’t use brunch as an excuse for getting a late start on your Riot Fest plans this weekend—not only because brunch deserves better (I think), but also because those coveted huevos rancheros will be on special in perpetuity to cure your hangover. Lug your corpse out of bed, submerge it in coffee, and drag it to Douglas Park by noon. It’s easy to never mind the opening bands at a mega music festival in favor of the marquee acts—some of them inexplicably reunited, some of them Nine Inch Nails—but early arrivals can catch several of Riot Fest’s most out-of-bounds artists, maybe even with elbow room to spare....

At the end of last week local bike shop Rapid Transit, a 21-year-old industry veteran, announced on its website and Facebook page that it will close its doors soon. In an excellent piece on Streetsblog Chicago, John Greenfield reports that Rapid Transit has been struggling since the economic crash in 2008, and owners Chris Stodder and Justyna Frank say they don’t have enough cash to make it through the winter. Both locations (the original one in Wicker Park, and a second one in University Village), will close within the next two months....

Don’t let “big talk” Rahm fool you. This is a mayor on the ropes yet again, but he’s sure to return to his old ways. In a March TV ad, he sat nestled beside a table, openly admitting to many of his glaring flaws, if only to show how mortified he’d be if voters kicked him out of City Hall. “I can rub people the wrong way—or talk when I should listen....

With his original 70-minute Christmas “fairytale play,” Joseph Zettelmaier takes a stab at creating a new family-friendly holiday classic, and director Lauren Nicole Fields makes a concerted effort to up the Hallmark coziness of the surroundings. Audience members can sit on big, comfy sofas, ensconced amid a half dozen tastefully decorated artificial Christmas trees, and listen to Grandfather tell young Cora the legend of the Winter Wolf while sipping hot cocoa on Christmas Eve....

Deborah Stratman’s Village Silenced screens as part of tonight’s shorts program at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The Nightingale, the Noble Square microcinema and multimedia arts venue, seems to be enjoying a busy month. Ten days ago the venue’s programmers embarked on a four-week collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art, curating four sets of experimental shorts for display in one of the museum’s exhibition rooms. The program changes each week—the second set premieres tonight at 6 PM, with one of the Nightingale programmers introducing the selections....

BBC Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman) says hello to the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi). It’s been three days since “Deep Breath,” the season eight (counting from the reboot in 2005) premiere of Doctor Who, and the response seems to be a collective sigh—of relief. The show has had twelve actors in the lead role and over 800 episodes since debuting in 1963, yet every new lead and season is met with some resistance....

Classixx On Tuesday local indie hip-hop label Closed Sessions released the official debut album from Treated Crew’s Mic Terror, Fresh Prince of Darkness, and the rapper’s celebrating its release with a party on Friday at the Hard Rock Cafe downtown. The lineup is pretty killer; Mic Terror are Saint Millie, Taylor Bennett, Treated Crew, and the reunited Cool Kids are all set to perform. VIP J, Mattboy White, Manny Muscles, Million Dollar Mano, and Closed Sessions’ RTC will spin throughout the night....

Few artists have done more to popularize the sound of West Africa than Amadou & Mariam. The blind Malian couple have built a career tweaking and modernizing traditional Mande forms, first by underlining affinities with American blues and then by opening up their sound to outside producers, especially Franco-Iberian star Manu Chao, who has helped them achieve global fame. In recent years they’ve cast a broader net, with mixed results. The duo’s disappointing 2012 album Folila (Nonesuch) included collaborations with indie-rock and electro-pop artists, and the hybrids began to water down their essence....

It’s been a bad week for naming restaurants after America’s heritage: Boka Group’s Armour & Swift, a West Loop steakhouse whose name was meant to evoke Chicago’s meatpacking history (both having been early meatpacking giants). The problem was that Armour is still an active brand name with active lawyers, and they threatened action to protect their brand. Ironically the same company, after many mergers, wound up owning the Swift name too, but apparently it’s no longer defendable—because Boka’s Armour & Swift is now Swift & Co....

During a March 30 ceremony at Rogers Park’s Mayne Stage, activists from across the country were recognized for their advocacy of the trans community. Among the honorees at the second annual Trans 100—cofounded by WeHappyTrans.com creator and Reader People Issue subject Jen Richards—ten were locals. Trans MMA pro Fallon Fox was one of them; here are the other nine. T.J. Jourian At Loyola University, where the 32-year-old also works as a teaching assistant, Jourian is pursuing his PhD in higher education with a vision for improving access and experience for trans students, staff, and faculty....

A couple years ago Vaya front man Jeff Kelley and baritone guitarist Kevin Claxton were talking about the unrecognized players and pockets of Chicago’s ever-changing, nebulous music scene when they came up with an idea. “We were trying to think about, ‘How could we—and I know this is a huge buzzword, but, like, curate bands for people to listen to where they wouldn’t know what they’re gonna get, but they will know it’s gonna be rad,’” Kelley says....

Inglis Hall Productions presents the world premiere of Joel Z. Cornfield’s timely play about how Americans deal with death—or don’t. Dr. Jake Forest is a surgeon who’s going through a divorce, drinks too much, and is sleeping with Heather, one of the nurses at his hospital. When his high school coach, Bill Erickson, asks to be taken off his cancer meds and be allowed to die on his own terms, Forest begins to reassess many of his own life choices....

As part of my ongoing effort to be more civic-minded, I figure I should help aldermanic candidates correctly answer Mayor Emanuel’s endorsement questionnaire. So if you don’t want Chicago Forward to pound you like a pinata, you have to answer these questions and answer them right. “Would you be willing to support tough but necessary steps, such as increases in property taxes . . . to help further reduce [Chicago’s] structural deficit?...

Broadly speaking, Hollywood war movies since the Reagan era tend to fall into three camps: bloody fantasies, a la the Rambo series, that center on lone, superhuman warrior-heroes; relatively bloodless spectacles in the vein of Top Gun, showcasing the state-of-the-art technology developed by the U.S. military-industrial complex; and artful blockbusters, like Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, that feature immersive re-creations of combat and seem designed to appeal to both prowar and antiwar viewers....

Among the uncountable curiosities that cycle and recycle through social media is a page of historic black-and-white photographs somebody colorized, apparently to remind us that people like Charles Darwin and Mark Twain didn’t live their lives in monochrome—that they once had flesh-toned skin and stylishly dyed clothes, just like us. The point is obvious, but the effect is still remarkable. People we’re used to seeing as chronologically remote are suddenly comprehensible as warm-blooded souls....

In 2014 defunct music blog Stuff You Will Hate predicted young musicians would begin a new wave of music called “soft grunge” by breeding Puget Sound rock with midwestern emo. Though some bands unintentionally took the idea to heart in their own blends of sounds, soft grunge has become more of a parallel Web-based fashion trend than a definitive musical movement that could put pop in a vise grip. That said, I imagine San Francisco band Culture Abuse could change things....

So far, details about how the new administration plans to do this have been scant. On Friday, Graham hosted a one-minute press conference at Lodge 7 and didn’t take any questions. Asked by the Reader what his new media strategy might entail, Graham responded in an e-mailed statement through vice president Martin Preib, also newly elected on the Blue Voice slate: But the Reader‘s investigation didn’t just point a finger at the FOP....

The Pitchfork Music Festival is in its ninth year—tenth if you count the 2005 Intonation Music Festival, curated by Pitchfork—and its increasingly diverse lineups have earned it a reputation for eclecticism. The 43 acts playing Union Park this weekend range from avant-garde R&B to ethereal shoegaze, from raunchy rap to aspirational black metal, and from confessional indie rock to whatever you’d call Grimes these days. Many major summer festivals in the States have disappointingly similar lineups, sharing acts the way unchaperoned teenagers swap spit, but Pitchfork stands out—where else can you see Circulatory System, Deafheaven, Pusha T, Neneh Cherry, and Giorgio Moroder?...

High Five In my posts about this year’s Chicago International Film Festival, I failed to mention the Uruguayan drug comedy High Five, which played two Fridays ago at 4:20 PM. It was one of the more memorable screenings I attended at the fest, and not just because the young man sitting behind me wiggled his bare feet on the armrest next to mine for most of the show. As I’ve noted elsewhere, contemporary Uruguayan cinema excels in depictions of simple pleasures and routine drudgery, so it seems inevitable that a Uruguayan movie about getting high would take place on a sunny workday afternoon....