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Bloodshot Records bloodshotrecords.com Runner-Up: Red Scare Industries

As gatherings of the Democratic Party go, Wednesday’s meeting of the Cook County Central Committee was a lovefest. Paul Rosenfeld, committeeman of the 47th ward, had talked about mounting a challenge. But he wound up endorsing Preckwinkle. Without the soda pop tax, her opposition had no issue to run on, and Preckwinkle wound up clobbering Robert Fioretti in last month’s Democratic primary. One black committeeman—Niles Sherman of the 21st—got so excited at the prospect of Vrdolyak’s chairmanship that he proclaimed: “This is a coming together process to broaden the horizons for everybody so all can get to the rainbow and stick our hand in that pot of gold....

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

La Michoacána

Joe Fresh Goods’s “Glo Up” line dont-be-mad.com/glo-up When gossip outlet TMZ abushed Chief Keef in November 2013, the world got a taste of a brand-new Keefism: “I growed up—I glo-ed up, I mean.” “Glo” has since infiltrated Keef’s persona, and in 2014 he ditched Glory Boyz Entertainment, aka GBE, for a new label called Glo Gang. His turn of phrase has also popped up in the language of hip-hop at large....

L’Patron tacos 2815 W. Diversey 773-252-6335 Runner-Up: Antique Taco

Tank Noodle 4953-55 N. Broadway 773-878-2253 tank-noodle.com Runner-Up: Nha Hang

Few instrumentalists are as closely aligned with a group and a sound as saxophonists Don Dietrich and Jim Sauter. Since 1979 they’ve worked with guitarist Donald Miller as Borbetomagus, a ferociously loud, overdriven improvisational ensemble that sculpts its blown-out attack with a mix of brutality and refined detail. During the course of nearly four decades the saxophonists hadn’t stepped outside that context aside from recording a single duo album and a trio with Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore....

Bronx rapper Kemba opens his self-released 2016 album, Negus, with a plea: “Don’t call it political / Please don’t deem this lyrical / These are negro spirituals.” Kemba, who’d previously recorded and performed under the name YC the Cynic, understands how easily his patient, contemplative songs can be pigeonholed as “conscious hip-hop,” but anyone who’d expect him to regurgitate east-coast boom-bap and a selection of preapproved lyrical subjects would be missing the full power of his music....

Alejandro Ayala, 42, is a Chicago event organizer and record collector who DJs as King Hippo. He runs the biweekly show QC on Lumpen Radio, and he’s hosted or cohosted a series for Worldwide FM that focuses on Chicago R&B, jazz, soul, and more, beginning with the 2018 show Chicago Overground. He’s worked in various capacities for Sleeping Village and the Whistler as well as for the label International Anthem....

It’s hard to know where to look first at Beatnik. Even on a Tuesday night the West Town bar and restaurant thrums with activity, nearly every seat filled. Lavish crystal chandeliers hang in the dining room and the covered courtyard, elaborately carved teak dominates one wall, and there’s tile everywhere, with an array of geometric patterns competing for attention. Plants dominate the space, making it feel like a greenhouse almost as much as a restaurant....

Gage Wallace gagewallace.com Runner-Up: Matt Edmonds

Melkbelly Melkbelly wrangle the tidal-size tension and release of noise rock with expert hands, pushing its blown-out frenzy inch by inch toward endearing indie pop. On last year’s Pennsylvania (Automatic) the four-piece contort cinder-­block bass, scraggly guitars, and brash, crackling art-punk drumming into all sorts of different shapes; the album’s longest song, closer “Scrupulous,” has time to transition from a lumbering, swooning melody into a blitz of heavy-hitting, hypnotic guitars that sound almost like a raga....

The Big Jones Cookbook store.bigjoneschicago.com A category like this has more candidates than you might expect, and it’s no slam on people from Mindy Segal to Anupy Singla to say that there’s one obvious winner here: Paul Fehribach’s The Big Jones Cookbook. Organized by regions of the south, it’s a cookbook built on cookbooks, as Fehribach is a devoted digger into long-forgotten volumes. And there are fascinating sidelights on everything from the Italian etymology of the low-country slave dish reezy-peezy to the old Virginia origins of chicken-fried steak....

As the recent Alabama Senate election showed, the strength of black women is both underestimated and impossible to ignore. Hailed as the demographic that “saved democracy and human decency” (CNN), tasked with acting as the “moral force” of an immoral country (the Root), venerated as the “disrespected, unprotected, and neglected” who, nevertheless, persist (the Guardian), black women remain underserved by stereotypes that fail to see the lives of individuals who make up the body politic....

In a sense, all animation is experimental, because an artist can’t really see how his images will move until he throws them up onto a screen. But don’t tell that to the filmmakers featured in the traveling Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, who’ve rejected the corporate world of commercials and children’s entertainment to pursue their own visions. Based in Los Angeles, the festival favors “works made by individual artists, drawing on the lineage of avant -garde cinema as well as the tradition of classic character animation and cartooning,” with two free programs on Saturday at Block Museum of Art....

Cate Le Bon makes pleasant weirdo pop music. It’s not so experimental that you couldn’t imagine it on mainstream radio, and in fact her songs have been used in TV shows, including the award-winning comedy-drama Transparent and the British rich-kid reality show Made in Chelsea. Le Bon’s lyrics come across like they’re borrowed from poems jotted in the journal of a highly sensitive person—if that person had died and come back to haunt their hometown....

The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. This weekend, as Oliver Sava has reported, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago returns to the Auditorium Theatre for the first time in 20 years for a retrospective of the work of its resident choreographer, Alejandro Cerrudo. Cerrudo is a bit of philosopher: he told Sava about how he viewed the Auditorium’s large, deep stage as an inspiration, not a challenge....