By Kiley Roache
Nazareth Academy

There’s a big difference between being famous and being famous and knowing how to have fun with it. Sure, there are plenty of celebrities with higher profiles than the guys of The Wanted. But this boy band proved they know how to have a blast together when they hit the stage at the Aragon Ballroom on June 3 for KISS FM’s Fantabuloso concert.

Before the show, the guys sat down to do an interview with The Mash. They all took a seat on the back of a couch, laughing about everything from the crazy moments on their new reality show, “The Wanted Life” to their first impressions of Chicago’s deep dish pizza.

They acted more like goofy best friends than celebrities being interviewed. Later that night, they took the stage and kept the energy going. Even after the show, as fans clogged the streets singing “Glad You Came,” the guys leaned out of their dressing room windows to wave goodbye.

Your reality show “The Wanted Life” premiered on E! recently. Were you able to watch it right when it aired?

Tom:  Yeah

Max: Well we watched it, we actually saw it a couple of days (before) at the E! launch of it, the party there.  So, yeah, we thought it was pretty entertaining actually. But I think there is definitely more to come.

Tom: Yeah there is. There’s much more drama, much more laughs …

Max: What did you think?

Kiley (The Mash):  I liked it a lot.

Tom: Oh good, at least we’ve got one positive review.

What are you doing while you’re in Chicago? Have you tried any of the foods we’re known for … like deep dish pizza?

Tom: Oh!

Siva: Oh!

Max: Yeah, is that—

Siva: No way, we just had that.

Tom: Yeah.

Max: Like where it’s built like a cake.

Tom: It should be called cake pizza because it’s like this deep, and I’m like (demonstrates trying to eat deep dish pizza), what is that?

Max: Pizza cake

Tom: (Laugh) Pizza cake. It is really weird, I was like, is that normal pizza?

Siva: That’s deep pan.

Tom: Really deep, like it should be called deep, deep pan.

Max: I got really bad acid off it as well. Heartburn.

How has Nathan Sykes’s vocal surgery affected you as a group?

Siva: When were on stage it’s been difficult because, obviously we’ve got to take on a lot of his vocals, and also it’s hard for the fans. The fans miss him too. He’s an important part of the group, just like all of us are. But he brings a certain dynamic and a certain vibe to the group.

Tom: Do you know what’s weird, is that when were up on stage, like naturally, cause there’s usually five of us, we have our spaces on stage. And I’ve noticed, like, I’ve been watching for the past few gigs now, we always leave a space for Nath. Like there’s always points in the show when there’s always a space missing. There’s three on one side and then one on the far side. But you kind of think it’s like cute, like that were doing it without thinking. So yeah, were missing him that much that we’re leaving a space for him on stage.

Has Rihanna contacted you since the release of your song “Walks like Rihanna?”

Tom: We met here manager, Jay Brown, in New York. He said that she heard it and they’re both fans, which is good. So yeah, that’s kind of cool.

Rapper Keith Cozart, better known as Chief Keef, pleaded guilty this morning to speeding 110 mph on the Edens Expressway last month. The 17-year-old has a learner’s permit and was told by the judge not to drive.

“I think you think you’re invincible, and you’re certainly not,” said Cook County Circuit Court Judge Earl Hoffenberg. “Violate (conditions of the plea agreement) and you’ll find out you’re not. … I sure hope I don’t see you again, because if I do you better be ready to go to jail.”

Under sentencing guidelines for the Class A misdemeanor, Cozart could have been sentenced to a year in prison and fined up to $2,500. But the judge fined him $531, put him on probation for 18 months, ordered him perform 60 hours community service, and undergo random drug testing. He must also complete eight hours of traffic school.

Dressed in a black T-shirt, plaid shorts, sneakers, and wearing a gold chain, Cozart made no comment in court.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t take this deal if you can’t follow these conditions,” Hoffenberg said.

“I’m really not sympathetic to people who don’t listen to me,” the judge added.

Cozart was stopped on the speeding charge May 27, a week after he had been charged with disorderly conduct in Georgia, where police say hotel security smelled marijuana smoke coming from his room.

Cozart was behind the wheel of a 2011 BMW X6 M, heading north about 3:45 a.m. at Winnetka Road, when a Northfield officer clocked him at 110 mph in the 55 mph zone, officials said. The officer pulled over Cozart, who was riding with three other men. He was taken into custody, and one of the passengers was allowed to drive the BMW away, officials said. The police report listed Cozart’s address as in the 600 block of Pfingsten Road in nearby Northbrook.

On May 20, Cozart was arrested at the Le Meridien Atlanta Perimeter hotel in Dunwoody, Ga., north of Atlanta. Hotel security alerted police shortly before 3 p.m. about illegal drug activity at the hotel. Security staff members told police they had noticed a smell of marijuana coming from the room. Officers arrived and spoke with Cozart, then arrested him for disorderly conduct for smoking marijuana, according to a police report.

By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah
Tribune staff reporter

Chicago Public Schools said Friday that 663 employees at schools the district is closing, including teachers, teaching assistants and bus aides, don’t qualify to follow students to their new schools and will be laid off.

The total includes 420 teachers, more than a third of them with tenure but rated either unsatisfactory or satisfactory. That allows them to be let go under the teachers union contract, which protects only teachers with excellent or superior ratings.

The cuts are a result of the district’s decision to close 49 elementary schools and a high school program that CPS says are underenrolled. More cuts are likely as the district implements its controversial plan, by far the largest school shutdown effort ever attempted in Chicago.

The threat of additional layoffs for teachers at the schools that are closing remains. About 600 teachers from closing schools meet the criteria to move with their students to CPS-designated receiving schools. But it’s not known how many slots will be open to them. That will be decided by principals at the receiving schools as they finalize staffing plans for the coming school year.

Also to be determined is how many principals, clerks and other employees will lose their jobs as a result of the school closings, said CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll.

The district also Friday announced layoffs at five underperforming schools slated for overhauls, known as turnarounds. In an effort to raise the performance level of those schools, almost all employees are let go and new staff is hired.

CPS said 192 employees, 125 of them teachers, will lose their jobs as a result of those turnaround decisions, which, like the closings, were approved in May.

The Chicago Teachers Union has expressed concerns that budget cuts will result in additional layoffs.

There is a process for teachers who are let go to get their jobs back, and officials said 60 percent of teachers who lose positions often find new ones in the district.

The district faces a budget deficit for the coming year of nearly $1 billion. CPS on Friday said it will cut staff at its headquarters in an ongoing attempt to address the shortfall, eliminating 100 positions that the district says is part of an effort to save up to $52 million in operations and administrative costs.

While individual school budgets have been sent out to principals, CPS has yet to release details on its overall budget, which must be approved by the end of August.

nahmed@tribune.com

3 stars (out of 4) Kanye West’s sixth studio album, “Yeezus” (Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam), is the latest affront from an artist who keeps inventing ways to tick people off.

At first listen, it is hostile, abrasive (both sonically and lyrically) and intentionally off-putting, as if to test the loyalty of even his most ardent fans. But, as usual, that’s only the beginning of West’s new detour.

West is used to being written off by many as a shallow, petulant, needy, self-serving braggart, a talented artist who can’t resist impaling himself on his own ego. And some of that is true, as West himself will be the first to say. But even as he barges in full-on full of himself in “Yeezus,” West demonstrates that he has a lot more on his mind than just self-aggrandizement or self-immolation.

One thing on which just about everyone can agree: West is pretty good at turning sound into his personal playground. His records sound great, set standards, and then move on to something new: the “dusties” soul vibe of “The College Dropout” (2004), the orchestral audacity of “Late Registration” (2005), the much-maligned-at-the-time melancholy electro-chill of “808s & Heartbreak” (2008), in many ways the most influential album of the last five years.

“Yeezus” is no exception, consolidating the worlds of ‘80s Chicago acid-house and 2013 Chicago drill music (the sound of Chief Keef and King Louie, both of whom have prominent cameos), ‘90s industrial, and the avant-rap of Saul Williams, Death Grips and Odd Future. Much of it sounds harsh, brutally minimal – sometimes stripped down to little more than West’s voice and a drum beat or a distorted keyboard (with production help from Daft Punk and Rick Rubin, among others). It is ruthlessly edited, with rhythms and rhymes that hit like anvils, a perfect soundtrack for dropping bombs, invading homes or bum-rushing an awards show complaining that no way did Taylor Swift make a better video than Beyonce. But there are sudden digressions and twists within the oppression, with glimpses of old soul and gospel, a sample of Hungarian rock, even Nina Simone’s version of the protest anthem “Strange Fruit.” Tucked inside lurk hooks and melodies that sink in over time.

Drill even further down, and West sounds more complicated than ever, an artist willing to throw himself off the ledge not just to get a reaction, but to open up a conversation about, well, just about everything that matters to him.

A wave of noise opens the album, synthesizers spazzing out in “On Sight” as West rises, “a monster about to come alive again.” He rages more outrageously with each line, a terrorist who is both merciless and irresistible to all he encounters. Abruptly it breaks into a sample from a gospel record that advises, “He’ll give us what we need, it may not be what we want” – a sly commentary on an album that is sure to defeat expectations about who West is and what he represents.

It is exactly those sorts of expectations that West aims to upend. A decade ago, he was creating songs about the precocious kid who hated his minimum-wage job at a retail store, a relatable, everyday figure in a hip-hop world populated by larger-than-life stars. Later he was the celebrity with a tendency to run his mouth and overstay his welcome – never as cool as his hero and mentor, Jay-Z, or as prodigiously gifted an MC as Nas. “Let’s have a toast for the douchebags … Let’s have a toast for the scumbags,” he sang on the 2010 track “Runaway,” before advising, “Run away as fast as you can.”

West has always owned and owned up to his contradictions, and “Yeezus” is no exception, even as it tramples all in its path. It amplifies his obsession with race, class and, sex (especially of the interracial variety), and how they speak to issues of control and freedom.

Over Gothic organ and ominously ping-ponging synths, “New Slaves” finds West protesting that many of his business partners are just new slave owners in corporate disguise. At the same time, the rapper goes out of his way to be more explicit, more tasteless than ever in rhymes that equate sex with violence and casual misogyny. At times — in particular a racially offensive joke about “sweet and sour sauce” on “I’m in It” — he’s exasperating, indulging in the kind of transgressive “humor” you’d expect from lesser artists.

But in playing into a sexual-predator stereotype, he also forces a debate about why it’s perpetuated: “They see a black man with a white woman/At the top floor they gone come to kill King Kong.” (West, of course, has been in a year-long relationship with a white woman, Kim Kardashian, who gave birth to their child over the weekend.)

Thunderous jungle drums clear a path for the marauding “Black Skinhead.” It’s over the top by design, a worse case scenario of King Kong run amok – a mainstream nightmare by way of Marilyn Manson’s industrial screed “The Beautiful People.”

On “I am a God,” West flirts with all those egomaniac perceptions of his public life. He plays into the outrage, even imagining a conversation with Jesus. “I am a God,” he intones, “hurry up with my damn massage … hurry up with my damn croissants.”

Even as West threatens to turn this into the blackest comedy record he’s ever made, he goes one layer deeper on the track. Here’s the artist who wrote “Jesus Walks” confronting the license granted him as a celebrity. By the end, heavy-breathing screams break up the electronic pulse, before being buried beneath a dark cloud of keyboards.

“Hold My Liquor” employs a wobbly, electronically altered Chief Keef vocal to lend a weird poignance to a tale of a damaged suitor stumbling into an old girlfriend’s house seeking solace and a second (third? fourth?) chance. But  “Blood on the Leaves” wastes a sample of Nina Simone’s biting version of  “Strange Fruit” on a tawdry tale of a man who juggles a wife and mistress, and loses them both. On an album rife with images of oppression, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for an update of the harrowing meditation on racism, but West takes a pass.

The album winds down with the deceptively bouncy “Bound 2,” as if trying to let a little light through the curtain of steel. It piles on the soul samples and a guest vocal from the Gap Band’s Charlie Wilson, while West plays the rogue in pursuit of “one good girl.” He talks on and on, until finally even he’s had enough of his own babbling. “After all these long-ass verses/I’m tired, you tired, Jesus wept.”

West has one final laugh at his own expense. It’s an album that baits listeners into isolating and focusing on its most outrageous lines, its most brutalizing moments, independent of the whole. On the surface, he’s created a polarizing album that practically demands to be loved or hated. But with West, it’s never quite that easy.

greg@gregkot.com

*** (out of four)

Other than a major influx of action and Kal-El’s/Superman’s mom giving birth, “Man of Steel” opens much like 1978’s “Superman.” Kal-El’s father Jor-El (Russell Crowe) dismisses evil General Zod (Michael Shannon) and insists that newborn Kal-El depart for Earth before Krypton somewhat beautifully explodes. So a cute baby goes into an adult-sized pod that looks oddly like male genitalia and, elsewhere in the universe, a very special, human-looking alien arrives in Smallville, Kan.

Fortunately, this delayed take on the DC Comics superhero from director Zack Snyder (“Watchmen”) and writer David S. Goyer (the “Dark Knight” trilogy), who conceived the story with Christopher Nolan, brings excitement and weight in the wake of the overly hated 2006 reboot “Superman Returns.” In “Man of Steel,” Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams) meets 33-year-old Clark Kent (Henry Cavill of “Immortals”) when the buff mystery man, who looks like an extra from Snyder’s “300,” saves her life. She doesn’t know who he is exactly, but she wouldn’t be confused if he put on glasses.

That’s the appropriate way to handle their dynamic. Otherwise, the film would counteract Jor-El’s belief that Earth contains “a seemingly intelligent population.”

Cavill and Adams didn’t have much time to bond before shooting, but they nail it. He’s sturdy but tormented; she’s tough and feisty without really trying to hide her interest in Clark—I mean, in unraveling his story. Understandably wanting to go a different route than Terrence Stamp’s confident, classic turn as Zod, Shannon registers menace—particularly when his eyes bug as he screams, “I will find him!,” determined to track down Kal-El wherever and however long it takes—without asking anyone to kneel before him. Admittedly, though, the Oscar nominee (“Revolutionary Road”) was more memorable reading that epic sorority letter for “Funny or Die.”

At times, “Man of Steel” bogs down with blunt statements about what the world can and can’t handle. That’s pretty much all Clark’s adopted father (Kevin Costner) tells him before tangling with a tornado to ensure the town doesn’t know his son’s strength.

The film’s flying sequences do look awesome, but it goes overboard with its endless climactic sequence. I know some of “Steel” was shot in Chicago, Mr. Snyder, but you don’t have to compete with “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.” Superman and Zod don’t have to crash through every building in Metropolis.

The movie connects as an American story of heroism anyway. Humans buckle in and confront the worst. Superman embraces his role by searching for his identity, rather than grumbling about his paradoxical responsibilities: Save the public, but don’t let them know what you can do.

He’s one of the original selfless studs, the fallible but fearless protector. Even non-comic book fans can easily look at someone like that with awe.

Watch Matt on “You & Me This Morning,” Friday at 6:55 a.m. on WCIU, the U
mpais@tribune.com

Sping Awakening – The Fans – Day 1 (Mike Rich/RedEye /June 17, 2012)

Last year, the first Spring Awakening Music Festival/EDM extravaganza descended upon Soldier Field for two days and five stages of bro-friendly glory.

This year, much to the horror of Jay Cutler and the Soldier Field sod, the fest has expanded to three days, running Friday through Sunday with more fist-pumping, more drops and more acts (on four stages this time). This year’s bash doesn’t represent quantity over quality, though, as the lineup showcases the genre’s move to what some have called its “post-bro” age (which really is a return to its roots). Translation: It’s not all “Wub-a-dub-dub/Three synths and a thud” in 2013. The acts are vast and varied, with a couple of Chicago OG electronic musicians in the house–er, on the field.

Depending on what you want to hear, we offer a range of suggestions to make your time the raddest, dude. So grab your “Levels” remix and let’s go.

If you want versatility: Flosstradamus
6:30 p.m. Sat. at Da Main Stage 1
The Chicago-based duo comprising J2K and Autobot has hit pretty much every other major Chicago music festival, thanks to their great performances and diversity of sound. It swings from hip-hop to dance and back. Soon the group will even release a trap mixtape with DJ Sliink.

If you want to see great live drumming: Break Science
4:30 p.m. Sun. at Da Equinox Stage 2
Live musicianship is something of a rarity at these fests, and, at the risk of being a rockist, it’s very cool when a group can integrate the two styles properly. Enter Break Science, whose Adam Deitch is a renowned drummer for his work both in and out of the studio, including a recent assist to Pretty Lights.

If you want an American dubstepper: 12th Planet
6:30 p.m. Sat. at Da Drive Tent Stage 3
One of Skrillex’s dudes, 12th Planet hails from the West Coast and hopped on the dubstep train before many others. He’s been on several Skrillex collabs and combines the personality of hip-hop production with the frenetic bliss of anticipating the drop.

If you want to see some classic Chicago house music: Felix Da Housecat
5:30 p.m. Sat. at Da Drive Tent Stage 3
Aside from his awesome name, Felix keeps a keen ear for trance while maintaining the facade of a melody that make his songs engrossing but accessible. Plus, in his home city, the dude is a VIP, and you know he’ll grace the audience with a tremendous set.

If you want to see the highest-rated DJ, according to DJ Mag: Nicky Romero
7:30 p.m. Sat. at Da Main Stage 1
DJ Mag bestows some Very Important rankings on the world every year with its DJ lists. According to the magazine, Nicky Romero is the hottest performer at this year’s show. Riding the current wave of straight house, his sound remains surprisingly low-key but still hypnotic enough to give Lil Wayne fits.

If you want to see identical twins: Milk N Cookies (7:30 p.m. Fri. at Da Drive Tent Stage 3) or NERVO (6:30 p.m. Sat. at Da Equinox Stage 2)
The brothers of Milk N Cookies take semi-mysterious press pics, so you need to see these dudes in person. They’re also the dudes you need to see for cocaine, apparently, as they were caught with more than $2,000 in cash and an ounce in cocaine last fall (after which they served a rather mild 30 days in prison). Straight rave EDM, the drop on their hit “Ghosts” sounds like a lobotomy, if that sounds like a good time to you.

NERVO, a pair of Australian sisters, is maybe a more appealing option, as Mim and Live have carved a path for themselves in this bro-game with light vocals that guide the way to inspiring drops. They won a Grammy co-writing “When Love Takes Over” with David Guetta and should win the hearts of oglers with their model-esque looks.

If you’re with your dad: Moby
9:30 p.m. Fri. at Da Main Stage 1
You either love Moby or you hate him. Your dad, however, will love Moby, since his music is harmless enough to sandwich between the Pretenders and Tom Petty on 93XRT during his lunch hour. Since the veteran artist is putting in a DJ set, it will be groovy enough that you can dig it too. The man hasn’t sold more than 20,000,000 records for nothing.

If you want to put your health at risk: Excision
8:30 p.m. Sun. at Da Main Stage 1
Nobody does loud quite like dubsteppers, and 100,000 watts of stereo practically redefines loud. Excision hails from Canada, and his hyper-aggressive warbling can literally leave you short of breath with a skipping heart, so you KNOW that you’re doing it right. Drink lots of water, kids.

Adam Lukach is a RedEye special contributor.