LANDOVER, MARYLAND – SEPTEMBER 23: Khalil Mack #52 of the Chicago Bears runs off the field against the Washington Redskins in the second half at FedExField on September 23, 2019 in Landover, Maryland. (Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images)

Notre Dame Football: Chase Claypool is officially in NFL by Vincent Parise

Chicago Bears: The hidden meaning behind their draft picks by Dominique Blanton

The Chicago Bears officially win the Khalil Mack trade with the Raiders after the 2020 Draft shows the results of the trades swapped.

The Chicago Bears made a big splash right before the 2018 season started. They swapped some draft picks to acquire Kahlil Mack from the Oakland Raiders. Well, all of the notable picks flopped between the Raiders and Bears have been made as of last night’s second and third-round selections. After knowing the results of these picks, it is pretty clear that the Chicago Bears won the trade.

Khalil Mack was a bit better in 2018 than he was in 2019. There are a lot of reasons why that was the case. Akiem Hicks was injured which forced a lot of extra pressure on Mack and the offense was so bad which had some negative effects on the defense. Even with that, the defense was still the fourth-ranked defense in terms of points allowed.

Mack has been nothing short of sensational for the Bears and nothing can take that away from them. He is also probably going to be that good for a long time in a Bears jersey. The Raiders let an all-world defensive player go in the middle of his prime and that is the bottom line. The only way that the Raiders could have won this trade is if they dominated the picks that the Bears gave them.

Well, they hit on Josh Jacobs with the 24th overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft. He is a very good running back but the position has much less value than it did at one time. They reached and selected Damon Arnette with the Bears’ first-round pick in 2020 at number 19 overall. The Bears then selected Notre Dame tight end, Cole Kmet, with the 43rd overall pick in the 2020 draft given to them by the Raiders.

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There are still some things to be worked out but most people would probably rather have Mack and Kmet over Arnett and Jacobs. The Bears got the best player in the trade and it isn’t really close. Ryan Pace has made a lot of mistakes but the Khalil Mack trade really isn’t one of them. He is the Bears’ best player and has given fans a lot to cheer about.

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Chicago Bears (Photo by Alika Jenner/Getty Images)

Chicago Bears: 2020 draft shows they win Khalil Mack Trade by Vincent Parise

Chicago Bears: NFC North rivals improve in rounds two and three? by Vincent Parise

The Chicago Bears addressed two needs at picks No. 43 and No. 50. At the same time, they showed some confidence in other glaring spots on the roster.

The Chicago Bears decided not to trade down and grab an extra pick or two. Instead, they stayed put and grabbed tight end Cole Kmet and cornerback Jaylon Johnson with the 43rd and 50th pick in the second round. Kmet will be expected to contribute right away at the Y-TE spot. Specifically, as a complement receiver to Jimmy Graham who will likely occupy the U-TE spot.

The Bears hope that Kmet will make up for the gaffe a few years ago when Ryan Pace selected Adam Shaheen in the second. Kmet should be a more pro-ready prospect than Shaheen was in 2017. He still needs work as a blocker (as most 1st-year TEs do), but he should provide Nick Foles (or Mitchell Trubisky) a nice safety blanket over the middle of the field and in the red zone.

Johnson is the best pick of the two and has the most upside. At 6-foot 193 pounds, Johnson is a physical corner that plays with solid technique. The Bears needed a press cover corner to complement Kyle Fuller and arguably the best one fell in their laps at pick No. 50.

Johnson should be able to slide immediately into the number No. 2 CB spot. If not the beginning of the season, he should be a starter by the end of the year. Johnson has all the tools to develop into high caliber No.1 CB. He could potentially become that player for the Bears in a couple years.

Fans expected the Bears to go some combination of strong safety, offensive guard, wide receiver, and even running back with those two picks. While strong safety is not a strength on paper, the Bears showed they have the utmost confidence in Deon Bush filling the void at that spot.

An offensive guard was another need that fans demanded. However, they must be high on free agent signing Germain Ifedi. Plus, they still have guys like Alex Bars and Rashaad Coward who are still young developmental projects.

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Wide receiver was a position most thought would be the pick at either one of those spots. However, the Bears seem to be confident that Riley Ridley or Javon Wims could emerge as the No. 3 WR behind Allen Robinson and Anthony Miller.

Next: NFC North sees mixed bag in first round

With five more picks left and the next one not being until the 5th round, the Bears could still address these needs with those picks. However, we just learned how Pace feels about certain positions on the roster.

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Chicago Bears: The hidden meaning behind their draft picks by Dominique Blanton

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Chicago Bears (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)

The Chicago Bears have seen their division rivals really improve their teams so far. Rounds two and three are no different.

The Chicago Bears and the rest of the National Football League have officially completed the first three rounds of the 2020 NFL Draft. They are looking to add what they need to add in order to make their football team better in the short and long term. It is something that is so important to improving their chances in the short and long term. There have been some mixed reviews about how it has gone so far.

They selected Notre Dame tight end, Cole Kmet, with pick 43 in the second round. He is going to come in and be a useful weapon for Matt Nagy’s offense. We don’t know for sure if it is going to be Mitchell Trubisky or Nick Foles throwing him the football but either way, he is an upgrade at the position no matter how you look at it.

Seven picks later, they selected cornerback Jaylon Johnson at pick 50. He was a defensive back for Utah before coming to Chicago. He is going to join the elite defense and be a big part of their backfield. He should join Kyle Fuller and Eddie Jackson as a part of a very good young backfield. This is pair of really good draft picks for the Chicago Bears.

So with the Bears having a pretty good draft, the next most important thing is how their division rivals did. They had some mixed reviews in the first round, but how did they do in the second round? It is very important to note how these teams did as they are the main ones who stand in the way of the Bears making the playoffs. This is how each team did in the second and third round:

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Upstart garage punks the Bobby Lees formed after guitarist-vocalist Sam Quartin moved to Woodstock, New York, and took a suggestion from a friend to recruit her new band mates from the local School of Rock. Now in her mid-20s, Quartin is an established actress who’s played alongside the likes of Crispin Glover, Michael Pitt, and Marilyn Manson, but in the Bobby Lees she gives you the idea that she might prefer basement shows to red carpets. On the new album Skin Suit (Alive/Natural Sound), produced by Jon Spencer, the band show they’ve got the chops and the weirdness to refresh vintage rock, punk, and blues (they do a gritty take on Bo Diddley’s “I’m a Man”) without the commercialism that has plagued other prominent garage bands of their generation. Quartin’s unpolished vocals often recall Richard Hell (the record closes with a rousing cover of “Blank Generation”), but the music is memorable enough in its own right to make you want to put highlights such as “Coin” and “Guttermilk” on repeat. The swaggering, minimalist “Ranch Baby” is equally funny and gross, with lead guitarist Nick Casa taking a turn at the mike to ponder a mysterious (and apparently sexy) creamy white substance. On “Last Song,” with its backdrop of sweet, 50s-flavored pop, Quartin delivers a take on “crooning” that sounds like Bobby Darin as a serial killer. Like so many other bands, the Bobby Lees had to cancel their spring tours, but with help from a little word of mouth they’ll surely be playing packed punk shows as soon as social-distancing measures allow. v

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A lot of theories about how Chicago hip-hop was supposed to operate have been shattered by the events of the past decade–the idea that only one local rapper in a generation could make it big, for instance, or the insistence that the city had a singular sound. While drill became the dominant underground wave, proving that young Chicago rappers and producers with few means or connections could build their own cottage industry outside the mainstream, a panoply of other artists showed how many dimensions the scene actually has: the Era devised “footworking with words,” DLow brought bopping’s euphoric sound to the Billboard Hot 100, and Supa Bwe mined the melodic aggression of screamo years before “Soundcloud rap” broke. At the same time, a loose web of producers laid the groundwork for a style that’s become emblematic of the city’s “alternative hip-hop” community. Most notable among them is Peter Wilkins, better known as Peter Cottontale, whose nuanced blend of neosoul, gospel, R&B, and post-College Dropout hip-hop has enriched some of the best material from local breakout acts such as Jamila Woods, Vic Mensa, and Chance the Rapper. These days Wilkins is best known as bandleader of the Social Experiment, which formed to tour behind Chance the Rapper on Acid Rap in 2013, and he’s played such an important role in every Chance release since then that Chance brought him onstage at the 2017 Grammys for two of his three awards. For Wilkins’s debut album, Catch, he tapped into their growing network of friends and collaborators, including rapper Tobi Lou, R&B star Jeremih, and inimitable gospel star Kirk Franklin. (Catch also contains one of the first appearances by Towkio since the Chicago rapper was publicly accused of sexual assault in January 2019.) Wilkins recently told the Tribune that Catch is bathed in gospel’s uplifting spirit but doesn’t follow genre traditions, and that’s a fair self-assessment: he imbues his songs with R&B tenderness, pop moodiness, and a hint of neosoul sensuality to create atmospheres that feel divine. v

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Sandy Ewen’s music is a constant series of negotiations. She’s constantly seeing what new sounds she can get out of her guitar, using found objects such as steel-wool scrubbing pads, dowels, bolts, cat-grooming brushes, and lengths of chalk. She’s also an inveterate collaborator who relishes chances to test her compatibility with new acquaintances or to explore possibilities within her enduring partnerships with drummer Weasel Walter, bassist Damon Smith, and guitarist Tom Carter. When she plays with others, Ewen’s style changes according to their input, but her solo work is much more consistent, focusing on gradual transformations of timbre and texture. On the side-length title track of You Win, which is her first solo LP after a slew of CDs and cassettes, she works patiently through bell-like chimes, blown-speaker bursts, elongated whines, and wobbly resonances, testing each element against a couple of others. The shorter pieces on side two develop more quickly, but each one resolves with a satisfying completeness that demonstrates her concern with outcomes as well as processes. Ewen is an architect and visual artist as well as a musician, and she has used architectural-rendering software to compose videos for each of the albums tracks–their constantly morphing shapes and images are as texturally rich as the music itself. v

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Chicago’s Like Rats have been at it for more than a decade. Comprised of current and former members of earth-shaking metal and hardcore acts such as Weekend Nachos, Hate Force, and High Priest, the band started as a brutal, tough-guy hardcore act. But by their second full-length, 2016’s II, they’d begun to incorporate overtly heavy tones and death-grunt vocals into their powerviolence-leaning punk. And the brand-new Death Monolith (Hibernation Release) feels like the band just threw up their hands and said, “Fuck it, we’re a death-metal band now!” The album has all the best hallmarks of classic death metal: never-ending double-bass-drum assaults, animalistic vocals, and relentlessly evil riffing. It also has enough fresh flavor to rank among the best albums of the modern era; Like Rats can grind like Pissgrave and slam like Sanguisugabogg. The production is clear and mean, the rhythms swing with beatdown ferocity, and everyone’s playing is next-level sharp. Death Monolith is an excellent turn for one of Chicago’s best and heaviest acts–here’s hoping they keep plowing down that path. v

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The first time I saw Orkesta Mendoza was at SXSW about five years ago, and the group had already perfected an enormous, vintage Latin big-band sound and intense, punk-like sensibility unparalleled in the Latin scene. Led by bandleader, singer, and guitarist Sergio Mendoza (a longtime member of Calexico and Devotchka), the Tucson indie mambo group cross and recross the southern border of the U.S. on their new album, Curandero (Glitterbeat), topping a foundation of 60s boogaloo with blends of rock, pop, and cumbia and adorning the whole thing with mariachi-infused, mambo-influenced horns. The new album follows 2016’s !Vamos a Guarachar!, and its 14 exhilarating tunes–sung in a mix of Spanish, English, and Spanglish–express the musical DNA of Nogales, Sonora, where Mendoza was born, and the adjacent Nogales, Arizona, where he was raised. On “Eres Oficial,” reminiscent of the 1960s McCoys hit “Hang on Sloopy” (a tune that topped the Mexican charts in 1965 after it was revamped as “Es Lupe” by Los Johnny Jets), singer Quetzal Guerrero makes a cameo, adding swinging vocals to the song’s carefree guitar chords and drumbeat-heavy grooves. Other stellar guests on Curandero include Devotchka’s Nick Urata, who lends his smooth voice to a funky vintage Mexican cumbia on “A Little Space,” and Spanish singer Amparo Sanchez, who appears on immigration-reform-themed “Boogaloo Arizona.” The track “Hoodoo Voodoo Queen,” reminiscent of 1940s Andrews Sisters numbers, shines with impossibly tight harmonies by Moira Smiley, Carrie Rodriguez, and Gaby Moreno, spread across languid pedal-steel twangs and punctuated by bold, honking sax. “Bora Bora” has a smoky, loungey feel, but its winks to mambo and its superbly synchronized horns keep it from feeling cheesy. “The girls are wearing the red dresses,” the band croons on the song’s brief chorus. “They’re waiting to dance and twist.” Curandero is the perfect album for anyone who’s ever felt that sort of anticipation. v

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Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Vivian McConnell comes from a musical family, and she began enmeshing herself in Chicago’s music scene in the early 2010s, around the time she moved here from Urbana. By then she and her oldest brother, Stan, were playing together in the indie-rock band Santah, and McConnell had also joined indie four-piece Grandkids; she’s since become part of several overlapping underground scenes. Lately her main artistic focus has been her solo project, where she uses the name V.V. Lightbody to honor her pianist grandmother, Virginia Lightbody, but she also provides auxiliary guitar, flute, keyboards, or vocals for a hodgepodge of other acts. She’s contributed to Slow Mass’s thundering posthardcore (2018’s On Watch), Accessory’s sleepy lo-fi ditties (2018’s Blue Tape), and Poplife’s effervescent take on adult contemporary, which they call “Bruce jazz” (the 2019 single “Bad Attitude”). Last year, McConnell debuted a collaboration called Valebol with Dos Santos percussionist Daniel Villarreal-Carrillo, and though they haven’t released any recordings yet, YouTube footage of their inaugural performance at the Empty Bottle last June has whet my appetite. On her second album as V.V. Lightbody, Make a Shrine or Burn It (Acrophase), McConnell blends light bossa nova percussion, austere indie-rock rhythms, snaking guitars, and tender folk vocals with a gentleness that belies the hard work and discipline required to pull off such intricate material. Though McConnell has called her style “nap rock,” she’s more likely to hypnotize you than put you to sleep–the oscillating keys and mellow sax on “BYOB” create an intriguing depth of sound that invites active listening. v

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In a 2019 interview for WBEZ’s Weekend Passport, Filipinx producer-vocalist Ano Ba said they were inspired to start their own group after seeing a garage band at a favorite Logan Square bar that was made up entirely of white dudes. Ano thought it’d be cheeky to recruit other POC musicians to make garage rock under the name “White Ppl.” White Ppl didn’t end up making three-chord bashers, but Ano teamed up with Black hip-hop artist Cado San and Filipinx vocalist Elly Tier to unlock an alchemical mix that no other configuration of musicians could replicate. After their first session, they emerged in October 2018 with the kaleidoscopic jam “Ilovemybb,” which remixes the past two decades of pop: early dubstep’s haunted vocal samples, funk carioca’s lithe percussion, alt-R&B’s brooding and romantic vocal melodies, bedroom pop’s mellow keys, and harsh sax a la TV on the Radio. Since then they’ve released only two other singles–the softhearted, nostalgic “The Way U Move” and the subtly triumphant “Open Door Policy”–and all three appear on their six-track self-titled debut EP. White Ppl’s lyrics remain firmly fixed on matters of love, but the group’s sonic palette continues to expand–for “Make Me Better,” one of the new songs from the EP, they pull from modern-funk’s supple rhythms, trip-hop’s cool-in-the-pocket melodies, and symphonic pop’s strings. Though White Ppl ends too soon, it shows a glimpse of one of the most promising acts in town. v

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