Finding the Record You Couldn’t Find Anywhere Else

A South Side Problem, Solved by a South Sider

In 2016, Grant Crusor went looking for Solange’s A Seat at the Table on vinyl. He checked shop after shop on the South Side and came up empty every time. He finally found a copy on the North Side, after a long drive that gave him plenty of time to think about why that trip was necessary in the first place.

Growing up, Crusor remembered a South Side full of record stores. By 2016, that wasn’t the case anymore, especially for a Black listener trying to find Black artists on wax. So he built the thing he couldn’t find. South Rhodes Records launched online in March 2018, with a simple goal: you shouldn’t have to leave your neighborhood to find the music that speaks to you.

A Name Rooted in Woodlawn

Crusor wanted the shop’s name to carry weight, tied to someone who mattered to the neighborhood and to Black Chicago. He found her in Lorraine Hansberry, the playwright behind A Raisin in the Sun, who once lived on South Rhodes Avenue, and the name has stuck ever since.

That sense of history runs deeper than branding. Woodlawn has lived through redlining and the slow erasure that came with it, and Crusor has talked about a newer version of that pattern: longtime residents priced out of neighborhoods they were once boxed into. Keeping a Black-owned record shop rooted in Woodlawn is one way of pushing back on that story.

Quality Over Quantity

Don’t expect crates and crates of everything under the sun here. South Rhodes Records specializes in Hip-Hop, Jazz, and R&B, with the occasional detour into salsa or Brazilian sounds when something earns it. Crusor curates tightly on purpose. He’d rather hand you fifty records worth owning than a thousand you’ll forget about in a year.

That philosophy covers new pressings, reissues, and the hard-to-find original copies that make collectors do a double take. Sell-outs happen fast around here. Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill rarely stays in stock for long, and neither does Solange, kept on the shelf on purpose given how the whole story started.

Where to Find Them

South Rhodes Records doesn’t have a storefront, and that’s by design for now. The shop lives online, with pop-ups showing up around the city throughout the years, including past appearances at Build Coffee’s patio market and citywide vinyl shows alongside other independent dealers. Keep an eye on their channels for the next one. Showing up in person is part of the fun, and it’s the best way to flip through what Crusor has pulled together.

Grant Crusor built something the South Side needed and gave it a name that belongs here. Every record sold keeps a piece of that history moving forward, one crate at a time.

Social Media:

Instagram: @southrhodes

Youtube Channel: @southrhodes

Founder’s Instagram: @gcrusor