Earlier this month prolific multi-instrumentalist Nnamdi Ogbonnaya told MTV News that his new album, Drool (Sooper/Father Daughter), is his first indebted to his experience in Chicago, the city that’s come to represent home despite his lack of a deep emotional attachment to it. “I don’t think I feel that way about any place particularly,” Ogbonnaya said. “It’s just the people I’ve met make it worth staying here.” His music reflects his relationships to his physical surroundings and creative community; he collaborates with circles of musicians in punk, postrock, hardcore, and hip-hop groups, but it’s in his solo work that he’s most free-floating and unmoored as an artist....

Ron Wynn Bombino Today the city announced the full lineup for this year’s World Music Festival, which runs September 11-21 at 20 venues around town; all events are free. This year’s programming, like last year’s, represents a recovery from 2012, when the festival was reeling from the loss of founder Michael Orlove—that lineup was hastily assembled, and it showed. Below you can check out an extended 2013 performance by Boban I Marko Markovic Orkestar at the legendary Guca Trumpet Festival in Serbia....

I Have Always Been a Dreamer Good news for those who missed Sabine Gruffat’s inventive, unorthodox documentary I Have Always Been a Dreamer when it played at the Chicago Underground Film Festival in 2012. On Saturday the film returns to town as part of an all-night event called Dearest Chicago, Please Love Me! Yours Truly, Detroit. The Nightingale will host the event, which features three programs of experimental work shot in the Motor City over the past decade....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Shavon Collins, incoming high school freshman. “I want to be a child psychologist. I see people having anger issues. Eighty-five percent of the time, they come talk to me about it, because they know I give good advice, so why not help out? The main thing I tell them is, ‘Why spend your time caring about somebody else when they don’t even care about you?...

Even hunched over a turntable in the cramped, overflowing record room of his LA abode, Dam-Funk is elegantly chill. During an hour-plus Boiler Room Collections DJ set he recorded in 2015, the Stones Throw-represented modern-funk musician and producer—less known as Damon Garrett Riddick—takes casual drags off cigs and plays smooth air-drum fills while spinning through a collection of deep-funk cuts and disco-infused early 80s “backwards-skating” jams. Occasionally he’ll ad lib some falsetto vocals over an instrumental or casually impart some liner-note details, but it’s a simple, casual trip during which you can almost feel the warm breeze tousling your hair....

GirlForward 1251 W. Devon Runner-Up National Runaway Safeline

Sure, you could hike all the way out to Homer Glen and get your python meat at Czimer’s, but why bother when they have fillets of frozen imported Vietnamese serpent at your local Mariano’s? Along with the oyster bars, barbecue stands, and popcorn machines, the burgeoning grocer offers a frozen-meat section dedicated to “tame game”—farmed wild critters like alligator, pheasant, ostrich, duck, quail, and buffalo. They’re all priced fairly steeply, so at least you’ll appreciate their sacrifice....

Julia Thiel You can’t see the carbonation, but it’s there Full disclosure: carbonated margaritas are basically the extent of the experiments in this post. There’s one slight variation on the classic margarita, but if you’re waiting for a big reveal at the end, it’s not going to happen. Julia Thiel The ingredients I might try carbonating it a little more next time, but I liked the mild bubbliness of the drink; I think extra carbonation might make it hard to taste the cocktail....

As former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett stood before a federal judge on the day of her sentencing last week, a grammar school special education teacher named Sarah Chambers began the third week of her school board-imposed suspension. Then, in 2013, Mayor Rahm’s school board appointees unanimously approved a $20 million consulting contract to a couple of scam artists who were kicking back some of the money to B-3, as the mayor so affectionately nicknamed her....

In a scene from the new biopic Jimi: All Is By My Side, a relatively unknown Jimi Hendrix, talking to someone on a pay phone at the London rock club the Bag O’ Nails, jealously watches his British girlfriend leave with another man and, when she returns, beats her to the floor with the telephone receiver. The scene has ignited a firestorm of controversy: Kathy Etchingham, the woman in question, has called it a complete fabrication, and Charles R....

Aziz Ansari just explained to me why that girl from the Northwestern movie premiere didn’t text me back, and this alone might make his print debut Modern Romance worth a read—besides that it’s funny, thoughtful, and genuinely valuable, a scientific journal disguised as a book of laughs. Modern Romance urges you to think about how you date, and, as a result, the reading experience comes with a lot of self-reflection. It might even prompt some changes in your approach....

Known for his old-school suspense and horror films, director Brad Anderson (The Machinist, Transsiberian) shows an uncommon sympathy toward his characters. No matter how minor or how despicable they might be, Anderson grants each of them some distinctive, humanizing trait; even the serial killer who drives the action of The Call (2013) is presented as a victim of childhood trauma. This evenhanded treatment enables Anderson to shift audience identification fluidly from one character to another, which certainly comes in handy in Stonehearst Asylum....

Steve Gunn It’s another busy week around town for live music, and there’s a ton of stuff to see from all different corners of the musical world. Tonight, solo prog drummer Terry Bozzio will be shredding his bazillion-piece drum kit at Martyrs’, while experimental-pop duo Buke & Gase play at Empty Bottle. Singer Banks, one of our Fall Arts Best Bets, plays a sold out show at Metro on Tue 10/7; the always-on-tour Screaming Females play at Logan Square Auditorium....

He returns to her apartment with his whole body vibrating at the joy of being a good boy, a clever boy, and finding his way home. His leash is still attached to his collar, though it is wet and discolored from dragging in the streets. She thinks out loud—a mugging, a car accident, or maybe, maybe, Ivan tied the dog up outside of some cafe while he grabbed a cup of coffee and the dog pulled loose and now Ivan is out looking for the dog—yes, that has to be it....

Bret Stamper, owner of Stamper Cheese Company, offers an array of artisanal cheeses sourced from farms across southwest Wisconsin, though some of the most popular, including the highly tasty chipotle cheddar, are his own creations. Other top sellers include the apricot Gouda, blueberry goat cheese, and smoked mozzarella string cheese. You can taste them yourself at your favorite neighborhood farmers’ market, where Stamper’s cheesemongers are more than willing to offer up a sample or two....

krissstress.com Runner-Up Sentrock

OK, so I don’t know much at all about Brendan Kelly’s personal life, much less everything he’s done the past eight years—he could’ve climbed Mount Everest, or caught a really big fish, or eaten an unusually large sandwich. I’m not privy to the milestones he may or may not have passed, because we’re not friends. But I do know about his band the Lawrence Arms, and in January they dropped Metropole (Epitaph), the long-awaited follow-up to 2006’s Oh!...