Matthew Searle
This week on SSW Radio we turned our airwaves over to the WHPK community, sharing testimonies from listeners and DJs alike.
SSW Radio: WHPK DJs and Listeners
Music
Portrait of an Abstract Contemporary Artist
Nikko Washington on gentrification, aesthetic form, and the exploration of the Black experience
Kahari Blackburn
You won’t catch Nikko Washington storytelling through the mic like his Savemoney crew members.
State of Nature
Mother Nature is raising “the collective conscience of damn-near the world through hip-hop”
Kiran Misra
As the old cliché goes, artists must “find their voices.” The rap duo Mother Nature, on the other hand, already know what they want to say. The two will waste no time telling you what they stand for: they’re a “badass group of MCs, coming to conquer the world through Black girl genius.”
SSW Radio: Sergio Mims, Plus Sign, and More
Students at the UIC FAST Adult Education and Career Transition - Center for Literacy work on exhibits for "Our City, Our Museum" (milo bosh)
This week on SSW Radio we continued our series on WHPK DJs, interviewed a local rapper, and heard from students developing museum exhibits telling their stories of their communities
Who’s Here and Who’s Not
Sol Patches unpacks their new album “Garden City”
Ellie Mejía
Sol Patches is a gender abolitionist artist from the South and North Sides who makes music influenced by poetry, theater, and black and brown queer and femme. Their new album Garden City includes a host of local collaborators including Hora English, Plus Sign, and Mykele Deville. The Weekly spoke with Sol Patches and Chaski, one of their collaborators, about the album.
SSW Video: Sol Patches Performs Verses From Garden City
Sol Patches is a gender abolitionist artist from the South and West Sides who makes music influenced by poetry, theater, and Black and brown queer and femme culture. Their new album Garden City includes a host of local collaborators including Hora English, Plus Sign, and Mykele Deville. In this video, Sol Patches performs solo, sharing verses from “Dear Chicago.”
Expanding Chicago’s Electronic Music Legacy
Chicago DJ Hieroglyphic Being cofounds an electronic music school to return House to its roots
Hieroglyphic Being (Jasmin Liang)
On a blustery autumn day in West Town, Chicago Phonic, a new educational center for electronic musicians, held its first public open house. Mixers, turntables, and computers were all neatly arranged in a room wrapped with lush, seafoam green wallpaper. Prospective students asked questions and milled around the narrow facility. Daryl Cura, one of Chicago Phonic’s founders, patiently answered questions on modern electronic productions while cracking open cold bottles of Peroni.
SSW Radio: Sol Patches, Transit Equity, and New Year’s Resolutions
Courtesy of Sol Patches
This week on SSW Radio, we spoke with a musician, discussed transit activism in Chicago, and heard your New Year’s resolutions
SSW Radio: HUEY Gang, Black Mental Health Care, and More
HUEY Gang (Dmiri Christiel)
This week on SSW Radio, we spoke with the HUEY Gang team, learned about mental health in Black communities, and investigated the racist origins of a childrens song
A Mural of Memories
Open Mike Eagle on commemoration, the Robert Taylor Homes, and how to keep going
Lizzie Smith
Open Mike Eagle, born and raised in Chicago, moved to Los Angeles after college, and for the most part, he didn’t look back. He joined the hip hop collective Project Blowed, formed the trio Thirsty Fish with Dumbfoundead and Psychosiz, released his first solo album Unapologetic Art Rap in 2010, and has a forthcoming stand-up and music show, The New Negroes, on Comedy Central that he will co-host with comedian Baron Vaughn. But on his most recent album, Brick Body Kids Still Daydream—a hazy, dark, powerful, and sometimes sweet recollection of the Robert Taylor Homes and their demolition, he comes home. The album reimagines the story of the Robert Taylor Homes, imbuing it with equal parts childhood fantasies, fuzzy memories, and the real-world darkness of a city that isolated, ignored, and then forcibly displaced thousands of its most vulnerable residents. This mix is perfectly encapsulated by the video for “Brick Body Complex”: Eagle plays Iron Hood, a superhero trying to warn residents that their building is coming down, fight back against gentrification, and stop the city’s demolition; in the end, at the moment when it seems Iron Hood has stopped the demolition, the cops show up to haul him off to jail.