It’s time for me to take my leave so that her and the crew can continue getting ready. She’s had all her makeup applied by now, so she stands up to give me a proper hug, still careful not to smudge my face. I wish her luck, still unsure of how uncouth that is, given the setting. She smiles the entire time.
After watching an opening act by Ravyn and Noname’s close friend, and Ravyn’s keyboardist, Akenya, another rising Chicago act, the crowd is ready for Ravyn to take the stage. She enters the scene almost like part of the stage design. Walking around stage without shoes on, she’s at complete comfort. She glides through most of Moon Shoes, which sounds great live. Then, in a really amazing moment, she performs Solange’s hit, “Cranes in the Sky.” Ravyn brings a softer, more careful feel to it, which works really well alongside the rest of her set.
I look at the faces in the front row, and most people seem to be genuinely and completely moved. One girl is nearly crying. I imagine that many that are a few feet from Ravyn have been following her career since the release of the first couple singles. At one point, she holds the mic to select people up front, offering them the chance to sing the vocalizations she does on “Blossom Dearie.” Few can get it just quite right, but her face shows she likes interacting with her fans this way. I’ll bet this part is gonna be a big hit on tour. After I’ve seen her run through her songs for the second night in a row and leave the stage, I find myself genuinely wishing the time had run by slower.
After her set, Ravyn joins Noname for a rendition of “Forever,” a song off Noname’s Telefone project which she appears on. The second night of the show has had a different energy. Although backstage was full of laughs, a the dark cloud of losing a friend hung over most of the performers. Dinnerwithjohn, AKA John Walt, a local rapper and singer born Walter Long Jr. had been murdered the day before. Just the two of them had performed “Forever” the previous night, but this time around,they are joined by Joseph Chilliams, Walt’s cousin, who also features on the song. It’s a heartfelt performance of a song about not getting to be with the ones we love as long as we’d like.
The crowd, I would guess largely unaware of the real sense of loss everyone on stage feels, sways happily. It’s a beautiful record. A little while later, for an encore, Noname will perform “Shadow Man” alongside Smino and Saba, another one of Walt’s cousins. It’s a song more concretely about death, as the three artists muse over what their funerals will be like. Saba is visibly shaken up after his performance, having had to say goodbye in a very real way. As his friends surround and hug him on stage, it’s a moment that perfectly exemplifies the Chicago music scene of which Ravyn is a proud member, not just as a group of friends, but as a family. In the wake of tragedy, even in the midst of the grandest kind of success, they come together, not merely physically, but through their art. They’re a group of people who have worked both together and separately for moments as surreal as the past couple of nights have been, and as the rest of the tour will be. As Ravyn said, this is now, and it could all be gone next week, which I think she and all her friends feel makes everything that much sweeter.