ARTIST: Guy BurwellSHOW: My Morning Jacket at Chicago Theatre on Tue 6/9MORE INFO: guyburwell.com

London rapper Kwadwo Adu Genfi Amponsah, aka Kojey Radical, worked in a variety of artistic mediums before trying his hand at music. Beginning at age ten, he spent nine years training as a dancer; he wrote poetry; and he graduated from the London College of Fashion with a BA in fashion illustration. He didn’t begin releasing music until 2014, when he was in his early 20s, but at 27 he’s focused entirely on rapping....

Last October, Denzel Washington searched the south side of Chicago for the ribs that he remembered from his childhood, only to be told that Leon’s, the barbecue restaurant he was looking for, was no longer there. His conversation with 86-year-old Juanita Hubbard, one of the women he met when he stopped to ask for directions, went viral, prompting the owner of Leon’s to announce that he’d be reopening the restaurant’s Woodlawn location....

Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the Reader. In the last election cycle, Democrats outpaced Republicans in collecting donations from the health-care sector. Democrats hauled in $286.5 million from health insurance companies, big pharma, and hospitals, compared to $165 million for Republicans. President Biden led the pack in individual recipients from the industry, collecting $60.8 million compared to $30.4 million for Trump. What happened to the Squad?...

Windy Citizens is a new series profiling people we think you should know. The debut Windy Citizen is Chantelle Branch, 38, a domestic violence specialist. This is her story as told to Sarah Nardi. Out of nowhere, he hit me. He hit me so hard that my contact popped out of my eye. And I remember thinking, “Oh my god, I’m driving.” I couldn’t believe he did that. And what’s crazy to me is that I just kept driving....

“You’re not real,” Berenice (Elizabeth Debicki) venomously tells her boyfriend, art critic James Figueras (Claes Bang) in Giuseppe Capotondi’s film The Burnt Orange Heresy. It’s a charge regularly leveled at critics, who are often portrayed as fake, facile parasites—carping wannabes who don’t understand the truth of art. The film dutifully reproduces most of these stereotypes. But it also, almost despite itself, suggests that it’s not critics who are inauthentic, but the labor relationships in which they find themselves....

Chicago has manicured parks and an expansive lakefront, but where does one wander if one wants to get lost in the woods? Sometimes this low-lying part of the trail floods, because of its proximity to the water. Or it turns into thick, impassable mud after a summer storm. Sometimes it’s a fun challenge to ride through; more often it’s a sign to try again later. In these conditions the trail is frequently drier and more ridable further north....

“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.” In these trying times, those words from H.G. Wells are as relevant today as when he wrote them in 1945. What does this mean? For our readers, we hope it won’t even be noticeable. We will continue providing in-depth journalism covering all parts of the Chicago area. For our advertisers, it should also be seamless. What will change is our ability to get increasing support from a wider range of people and foundations, those who want to support nonprofit journalism for all that it does to make a city better and its government more accountable....

Carlos Santana is arguably one of the most influential guitarists of all time; born in Jalisco, Mexico, the musician, bandleader, and longtime social activist has been incorporating Mexican, Latin American, and other international sounds into rock ’n’ roll and blues since the mid-60s. Now 72, he’s won practically every prize the music industry has to offer, racking up ten Grammys, three Latin Grammys, a Kennedy Center Honors medallion, a Billboard Lifetime Achievement Award, and more....

This year only six rock albums have topped the Billboard 200 (as of press time, anyway). Two were by aging alt-rock titans (Foo Fighters and Linkin Park) and three were by aging aughties “indie-rockers” working with major-label budgets (LCD Soundsystem, Arcade Fire, and the Killers). The sixth album was the recently released Science Fiction by Brand New, a band that has been thriving on the fringe of the mainstream since 2000....

When the shutdown hit a year ago, the Neo-Futurists were one of the earliest to adapt to creating digital theater. Within days of the stay-at-home order, they were figuring out how to convert their signature late-night hit, The Infinite Wrench (itself born out of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, the original “30 plays in 60 minutes” show that was reimagined after founder Greg Allen pulled the rights) into an ongoing offering on Patreon....

UPDATE Friday, November 1, 4 PM: Line-up has changed for both concerts and Vivian Girls and Young Guv will not be performing either show. Refunds available at point of purchase; visit the Empty Bottle’s site for more information. Toronto’s Ben Cook is well-known as the front man for early aughts tough-guy hardcore outfit No Warning and as the third guitarist in posteverything punk collective Fucked Up, but the bulk of his discography consists of a seemingly unending stream of multifaceted solo releases under the alias Young Governor, which he often shortens to Young Guv....

Bulgarian playwright Zachary Karabashliev’s 2008 play, about two entwined dysfunctional families and their messed-up lives, was written originally in English and then translated into Bulgarian by the author before being presented in his home country. (This is why it is only now receiving its English-language world premiere.) Sunday Evening is not perfect. Karabashliev favors a fragmented storytelling style that shatters expectations of a linear plotline—and at times leaves the audience scrambling to put together what is happening....

Leonard Cohen did prepare us for this. In the title track on his final album, You Want It Darker, out last month, he sang, “Hineni, hineni, I’m ready, my Lord.” He told the New Yorker‘s David Remnick, “I don’t think I’ll be able to finish those songs. Maybe, who knows? And maybe I’ll get a second wind, I don’t know. . . . I am ready to die. I hope it’s not too uncomfortable....

There are several confounding mysteries surrounding the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the 66-year-old “financier” who was arrested July 6 on a federal sex trafficking indictment that alleges he recruited and sexually abused dozens of minor girls, some as young as 14 years old, beginning at least in or about 2002. And for reasons I will discuss in a moment, don’t expect clarity anytime soon. According to Brown, the feds had the goods on Epstein more than a decade ago, identifying 36 underage victims of sexual abuse....

The food a restaurant serves its employees during a shift is usually called “family meal.” (In industry parlance, the article is always conspicuously absent; the typically casual, buffet-style spread isn’t “a family meal” or “the family meal”—it’s just “family meal.”) The phrase conjures the image of the restaurant staff as one big clan—from the marquee chef to the lowly dishwasher, the seasoned front-of-house manager on down to the humble cub busboy—all breaking bread together before they man their respective stations for the breakneck pace of dinner service....

Here are two ways of looking at Thursday’s Brexit vote, if you’re wondering what the British people’s unexpected decision to pull out of the European Union augurs for Donald Trump here in America. As the New Yorker‘s Anthony Lane wrote Friday: “The gods of disorder and upheaval, in short, enjoyed a busy night. But they were not yet done. In fact, they were just getting started.” Trump is counting on those gods, so the vote is good news for him....

From 1990 to 2014, Ted Frankel owned and operated Uncle Fun, a Lakeview shop that sold novelty items and gag gifts. The mild-mannered Frankel could often be seen casually sporting a jester’s cap or a wig composed of glow sticks, and his stock included such staples as bacon-flavored lip balm, glasses with googly eyes, hordes of rubber cockroaches, unicorn snow globes, and enough fake poop and vomit to fake a yearlong stomach bug....

Thinkstock But we promise we won’t let anyone touch your friend’s face with their filthy, clammy hands. There’s one in every group of friends. The guy or girl about whom everyone asks, “Why are they single?” And you’re like, “I KNOW, RIGHT?” Hell, you’d date him, but that would probably annoy your boyfriend a bunch. And you’d try to set him up with your cousin, coworker, or that cute girl who makes your coffee in the morning, but you don’t want to be responsible for it being a fucking disaster....