Members of East Garfield Park’s Hope Junior Drumline and WestDance Team have been practicing three hours a day, five days a week since late June to prepare for their 10-minute performance at Lollapalooza on Sunday.

In a sea of familiar artists — from Megan Thee Stallion to Miley Cyrus — a few local faces are hoping to make a bigger name for themselves at this year’s Lollapalooza. Among them is Chicago-based songwriter and producer Nez.

Rapper DaBaby was cut Sunday from Lollapalooza’s closing lineup following crude and homophobic remarks he made last week at a Miami-area music festival. 

As thousands of music lovers flocked to Grant Park for the first day of Lollapalooza, a surge of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Chicago and the suburbs prompted Gov. J.B. Pritzker to reimpose a mask mandate in state facilities for everyone, regardless of their vaccination status.

As the massive four-day music festival gets underway in Grant Park, event organizers announced the launch of a fund that will support arts education over the next five years for more than 100,000 students within Chicago Public Schools.

Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said safety protocols in place for the massive four-day festival are sufficient to allow it to go forward despite a surge in COVID-19 cases. “I’m certainly hopeful that we won’t see a significant problem,” she said.

The four-day music festival is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people to Grant Park, and many are concerned it could become a “superspreader” event. But city officials say it will go on as planned. 

More than 100,000 fans are expected to attend the massive four-day music festival that starts Thursday. “We’ve been having large-scale events all over the city since June without major problems or issues," Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.

Illinois’ governor says he’ll be among thousands of people flocking to Grant Park next week for the massive music festival, even as the delta variant drives a rise in the number of COVID-19 cases in Chicago and across the U.S.

The massive music festival that routinely attracts more than 100,000 people per day to its stages starts next week as the delta variant drives a rise in COVID-19 cases. Should the show go on? A local music critic and an infectious disease doctor share their thoughts.

The massive four-day music festival that Mayor Lori Lightfoot says is “synonymous with summer” will return this year after being canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic. The lineup will be announced at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Chicagoans who are vaccinated against COVID-19 could get a “Vax Pass” allowing them to attend summer events and concerts like Lollapalooza, Chicago’s top doctor said Tuesday.

The annual music festival gets underway Thursday in Grant Park. Why this year’s four-day event comes with tightened security measures.

Stephen Paddock, the gunman who opened fire on thousands of concertgoers in Las Vegas late Sunday night, had booked two rooms in Chicago overlooking Grant Park in August, during Lollapalooza, according to a report from TMZ.

It has become a rite of summer for hundreds of thousands each year. But beyond the annual intrigue over who will become the next breakout star comes a persistent question from city residents: Is this massive private festival really worth it?

A slew of lesser-known names deserve just as much attention as the late-night heavy hitters. Behold: Your best bets for your dose of daytime music this weekend.