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A weird thing happened a couple of years ago. All of a sudden there were a bunch of great DJs, producers, and rappers in Chicago, bringing together the hip-hop scene and the burgeoning postgenre underground club culture (which popped up after electroclash sputtered out and M.I.A.’s Arular dropped) like no one else in the country, attracting all kinds of media attention—and then they just didn’t follow through with the records we were all expecting from them. That trend (if you can call it a trend when something doesn’t happen) has begun to reverse itself in the past few months. The Cool Kids finally put out their long-delayed album, When Fish Ride Bicycles. Flosstradamus finally started putting records out (though not without some legal snafus). And now Vyle, the rapper who was on the bill at something like 90 percent of the club nights in town a few years ago, has decided to join the Actually Putting Shit Out Gang.
