Credit Katie Levine
Google s 2020 Year in Search campaign featured a song by music producer Peter CottonTale, the first original song ever commissioned for the campaign, the company confirmed to Business Insider.
The song features Chance the Rapper, singer and actress Cynthia Erivo, and the Chicago Children s Choir, among others.
The 29-year-old CottonTale told Insider the song s goals were both to highlight Black creatives and the narrative of loss through the perspective of the Black community, which has been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
CottonTale says over 80 Black artists, engineers, producers, and managers came together to create the song.
Google will donate $35,000 to the Chicago Children s Choir and $15,000 to the Merit School of Music. In 2020, just 3.7% of Google employees were Black, up from 2.4% in 2014, as reported by Fortune.
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Canceled events, publishing delays, shuttered bookstores in many ways, 2020 was an awful year for Chicago writers. But it was a fantastic year for Chicago readers, at least when it comes to new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. To keep this list manageable, I ve limited it to books with a strong emphasis on the city itself. That means you won t see books set elsewhere, like Natasha Trethewey s
Memorial Drive and Kathleen Rooney s
Hood Feminism. Nonetheless, here are my favorite Chicago-focused books of 2020, available at an independent bookstore near you.
Monica Schipper / Getty Images for Panorama
Originally published on December 16, 2020 2:42 pm
It was a tough year for live music, but NPR s Member stations across the country managed to produce some great radio sessions before and during the pandemic. Here are the best of the bunch, featuring studio performances, home recordings and socially-distanced outdoor sets. For more live sessions from your favorite public radio stations, visit our Live Sessions section.
Alsarah & the Nubatones, Soukura
Alsarah & The Nubatones are a Brooklyn-based band with roots in East Africa. Lead singer Alsarah describes their style as East African retro-pop.
Adam Harris,
Anjimile, Baby No More
These are the big books this holiday season, to read or give
Patrick Rapa
Peak TV has peaked, movie theaters are no-go zones, the Eagles are painful to watch, and the squirrels outside your window are just lying around looking at their phones. We’re in the doldrums, and all signs point to a long, dull winter.
But at least we have books.
Books to give as gifts. Books to give ourselves. Good ones are coming out all the time, which is why we’ve assembled a list of some top new titles to help point you in the right direction. There, our job is done.
Talking that talk times two, City Girls highly anticipated sophomore album,
City On Lock, would have made perfect party music if we were not in a global pandemic. Even without clubs, Rodeo is a gem, as JT and Yung Miami assert their right to have erotic experiences, explaining them in detail over pounding drums. It s filled with quotable one-liners I m young and I m sexy and reckless JT declares in the opening verse that uphold the tradition of Black women using rap to conceive of and construct their sexuality, and it s the first thing I m playing when it s safe to be outside again.