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“[I’m] just the Burt Bacharach of the shit,” Lando Chill muses on “Clypped,” off his latest album, Black Ego. Like most lyrics from the Tucson rapper, the boast first comes across as a woozy offhand joke, but the more you think about it, the deeper it seems to get. The album’s laid-back, loungy trip-hop vibe comes courtesy of producer, the Lasso (aka Andy Catlin) and Chill’s rhymes wrap around the meaning of his words with an easy, intricate sophistication that would make Bacharach lyricist Hal David envious....

On Monday, May 1, hundreds of thousands of immigrants, activists, and workers of all stripes are expected to take to the streets in cities across the country and the globe to commemorate International Workers’ Day, aka May Day. May Day’s origins are centered around the call for an eight-hour workday, a fact of life many of us take for granted but which was fought for fiercely by industrial workers facing brutal conditions in the late 19th century....

If you hadn’t noticed, everything is still coming up Pharrell. His singles “Get Lucky” (with Daft Punk) and “Blurred Lines” (with Robin Thicke) were last year’s most inescapable songs. His hat game is now legendary. His tux game is impeccable. The 40-year-old producer, who’s been in the industry for nearly a quarter of a century, is suddenly the hottest thing in pop. G I R L is a thoroughly lightweight album, but it’s already gaining an importance that the breezy music doesn’t immediately suggest....

The hoped-for paradox of minimalism is that reduced means will result in maximum effect. No artist has accomplished this more completely than composer and filmmaker Phill Niblock, whose music intentionally eschews rhythm and melody in favor of massed, sustained tones. The beats that result when microscopically variant pitches are played at sufficient volume turn unchanging tones into dense clouds of constantly morphing sound. And while the 83-year-old New Yorker prefers the timbres of acoustic instruments, these transformative phenomena result in music that often sounds electronic....

Che “Rhymefest” Smith didn’t set out to perform at the Chicago Blues Festival. When Frayne Lewis, a programmer with the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, approached the rapper last fall, it was to brainstorm ideas to shake the festival up. “The Blues Fest was not evolving. It wasn’t evolving as you see Lollapalooza evolving,” Smith says. “I suggested connecting [with] Donda’s House—the organization that I’m a part of that does artist development for youth—[to help] young people reimagine the blues....

The Reader won a half-dozen awards, including three top prizes, at the 2017 Association of Alternative Newsmedia Awards, held last weekend in Washington, D.C. Winners were chosen from entries submitted by 67 alternative publications across North America. We don’t have a lengthy acceptance speech ready or anything. But below we’ve linked to the winners as announced by AAN. We hope the work speaks for itself. INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING circulation 45,000 & over...

Onions have been cultivated for at least 7,000 years. They’re one of the most common ingredients in almost every cuisine. So when Gabino “Bino” Ottoman of the Ruin Daily challenged Adam Wendt, chef at the soon-to-open Wicker Park restaurant the Delta, to build a dish around yellow onions, Wendt had his work cut out for him. “It’s kind of a crazy ingredient to be challenged with, because it literally goes into everything,” he says....

Ashlee Rezin/for Sun-Times Media Northside College Prep, at 5500 N. Kedzie, shown in February. In April, U.S. News online ranked Northside the No. 1 public high school in Illinois. Some of the highest-ranked public high schools in Illinois are Chicago schools. I’ve mentioned this from time to time, as have other local education writers. This year, U.S. News online, which ranks the public schools, deemed Chicago’s Northside College Prep the state’s top-ranked high school....

Bob Odenkirk‘s CV is an aspiring comedian’s fantasy: writing for SNL in its late-80s heyday, the ahead-of-its-time Chris Elliott show Get a Life, and Late Night With Conan O’Brien in its 90s prime; cocreator and costar, with David Cross, of Mr. Show; a recurring role in The Larry Sanders Show. He also happens to have discovered Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. Not all of A Load of Hooey induces laughs: some of the pieces are too oblique or ridiculous, and Odenkirk’s poetry (yes, there are poems) doesn’t exhibit his characteristic sharpness....

Chicago Folks Operetta has carved a niche over the past decade by specializing in long-forgotten hits from the “Silver Age” of European operetta in Vienna and Berlin in the 1910s and ’20s—schmaltzy, tuneful romantic comedies that evoke nostalgia for a simpler age before the First World War shattered the established order of European imperial politics and culture. But now—marking the 100th anniversary of America’s entry into World War I—CFO has taken a bold gamble on the long-overdue Chicago premiere of Kurt Weill and Paul Green’s 1936 operetta Johnny Johnson....

Here’s an old Czech proverb: Lepsi jeden prd nez deset doktoru, or “Better one fart than ten doctors.” It’s earthy advice for digestive health, but it’s also an apt metaphor for what’s going on at Bohemian House. That’s why his potato pancakes are dainty little things; a trio of bites, dabbed with apple preserves, kohlrabi matchsticks, and ribbons of cured salmon with dill fronds for corsages. These are three dear ($12) and tasty little hors d’oeuvres—or they would have been had they arrived when they were still hot (one of a few examples of poor pacing and disorganized service that hadn’t been ironed out by the time I visited)....

This transatlantic group represents a small but growing species in experimental music: players who are fluent in both composed contemporary music and free improvisation. In fact all four musicians make it difficult, if not impossible, to indicate which discipline their work privileges. Bassoonist Katherine Young has long been a key figure on Chicago’s scene, composing rigorous, full-scored works and directing her often unwieldy instrument with an electrifying liquidity, while Sam Pluta, who arrived at the University of Chicago just last fall, showcases a latency-free mastery of live signal processing, refracting the lines and gestures of his collaborators with quicksilver grace....

Depending on whom you ask, America has always been “Christian Nation,” its guiding principles rooted firmly in Protestant tradition. Such an invocation has long been put forth by those on the right, frequently in contrast to a perceived shift away from “core” American values as the nation has become increasingly liberal. She eventually broke off ties with evangelicalism when a group of her friends performed a dance with insulting Indian stereotypes....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, March 24, 2017. Chicago lost more people in 2016 than any other metropolitan area in the U.S. Approximately 19,570 people moved out of the Chicago metropolitan area in 2016, which was the greatest population loss of any metropolitan area in the U.S., according to the Tribune. Chicago was also the only one of the ten largest metropolitan areas to lose residents. It’s the second year in a row that the area has lost more residents than it gained: 11,324 people left in 2015....

For years Bill MacKay has soldiered on as one of the most skilled and tasteful guitarists in Chicago, a player who fluidly moves between jazz and rock while making several stops in between. He’s gained attention for his quartet Darts & Arrows—a tuneful fusion band that somehow bridges a gap between Larry Coryell’s early work with Gary Burton and Tortoise at their most lyric—but other sides of his musical personality have commanded the spotlight too, including the rustic, folksy one on display in his duo with Ryley Walker....

Tim and Eric and Dr. Steve Brule Tue 9/23-Wed 9/24, 8 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, athenaeumtheatre.com, 16+, sold out. Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher 10/14, 7 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, 773-525-2501, lincolnhallchicago.com, $15. 21+ Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher both cut their teeth in Chicago’s stand-up scene, and, along the way, grew pretty fond of each other. The pair are now engaged and live in LA, but will be swinging through town on the heels of the release of Esposito’s first album, Same Sex Symbol....

On Monday at 7:15 PM the Chicago Film Society and CHIRP Radio will present a rare 35-millimeter revival of Robert Altman’s Popeye at the Music Box Theatre. This is surely the most important revival screening of the week, a chance to see an unsung American masterpiece in the big-screen environment it deserves. (Incidentally, the week’s second-most important revival—Doc Films’ 35-millimeter presentation of Alan Rudolph’s Remember My Name, playing Thursday at 9:45 PM—was produced by Altman....

As soon as I saw the story about a Chinese political/real estate dynasty looking to cut a deal with its U.S. counterpart, I went looking for the local angle. I figured an arrangement this “creative” just had to have some sort of Chicago connection. And you thought Chicago was rife with nepotism. My favorite part of the real estate story comes when an unnamed White House press officer tells the Times that “these private-sector negotiations will not affect the Trump administration’s policies or approach with China in any way....

Ken Ilio Ron Dorfman Ron Dorfman died Monday in his home on North Sheridan Road. His body was found on the bathroom floor by his friend Vicki Quade, who had come to take him to a doctor’s appointment. Ron was days away from a risky operation on his failing heart, and it was because his health was so precarious that he recently made history in Illinois. Last December 13, thanks to judicial dispensation, he and his partner, Ken Ilio, got married....

You’d never mistake Merce Cunningham for a traditionalist. A tap dancer growing up, the striking, hollow-faced innovator of postmodern movement is credited with creating some of the most influential and radical dance-theater works of the mid to late 20th century. He did so until his death in 2009, at the age of 90. But he didn’t do it alone. “Common Time” induces an incredible, and in some ways subtle, realization of the scope and quality of the composite artistry of several of Cunningham’s masterpieces....